Clash of the Elements Part 4 EX True End: The Fall of Fantasy
by mewmaster93
Summary: After being wronged by Yukari Yakumo for the last time, Alex Whiter returns to Gensokyo, dead set on putting an end to her once and for all. The humans and Youkai of Gensokyo, caught between the two's war, must decide who they will ally themselves with. And when everything is said and done, nothing will ever be the same again...
1. Chapter 1

" _And that...is everything I know."_

" _..."_

" _I'm sure you have a lot of questions."_

" _...You didn't tell me what happened to Shina, mom."_

" _She did make it to where the Cosmos Drive is, that much I am certain of, but..."_

" _But what?"_

" _The energy surrounding its location...Is able to block off my clairvoyance. If she has emerged from that place since then, then that means she's still there."_

" _Still there? But why? Wouldn't she have gotten the Cosmos Drive?"_

" _...I don't know dear. I wish I could tell you, but I simply do not know."_

" _Then...I'll have to go there and rescue her myself!"_

" _...I figured you'd say that. I can do nothing to stop you from going, you know?"_

" _Just like you did nothing to stop Shina?"_

" _..."_

" _Mom...Thank you for telling the truth...But...Shina would've never been in this mess if_ _ **you**_ _let her stay behind!"_

" _Even if I said no, there'd be another version of me who would have said yes. That's how time works dear...In the end, there'll always be a timeline where a young, frightened little girl is deprived of her sweet older sister."_

" _I don't think that's true!_ _ **We**_ _beat Justek! We changed the future he saw! ...And now I'm going to change Shina's future, and bring her back home safe and sound!"_

" _Again, I'm not going to stop you. Do whatever you must dear."_

" _...Fine. I'll do it myself!"_

" _..."_

" _...But ummm...There's one more thing that's bugging me mom."_

" _Its about Alex Whiter, isn't it?"_

" _So he came back to life...and went after that Yukari person..."_

" _Yes."_

" _And ONLY Yukari...right?"_

" _..."_

" _So, why would he suddenly want to destroy the whole universe?"_

" _I don't know. He returned to Gensokyo, I know that...But everything between that and him releasing Justek is a blank."_

" _A...blank?"_

" _Yukari would know of my clairvoyance. She must have done something to cut me off. But honestly, I'd fully believe that Alex Whiter simply went insane."_

There is some truth to that, Auris Aurora. But I am getting a little too far ahead of myself.

There **is** a _gap_ to fill in this story. One last tale that desperately needs to be told. The last piece of the bridge connecting 3 to 6, so to speak. It is a tale of woe. It is a tale of loss. It is a tale...of despair. This is your last warning to turn back now, and accept a blissful ignorance of the truth. I will not fault you for this decision.

But what you are about to read is the truth, and nothing BUT the truth. And thus may our story begin from the start...

 **CLASH OF THE ELEMENTS PART 4 EX TRUE END:**

 **THE FALL OF FANTASY**

 **Chapter 1: The Fall of Fortune**

The Moon. The glistening pearl in the night sky that is coveted so longingly by humanity. To many, its a calming presence that lulls even the most trembling hearts to rest. To others, it is a goal, the first of many footsteps towards greater heights that humanity can reach.

But what very, very few people know is that this particular moon had been claimed long, LONG before humanity first stepped forth from the primordial ooze of the Earth. Hidden where no one can see by a barrier more divine than the heavens is a single city, the Lunar Capital.

The residents of this city, the Lunarians, pride themselves on having lived long lives devoid of the slightest impurity. They see themselves superior to all other races, going so far as to consider the Earth a prison. Death is considered both a rarity and disgraceful, and as such their fear of the concept has driven them to isolate themselves from contact with anyone but themselves.

Though there is a second species on the moon that, by some technicality, can be considered Lunarians as well. These are the moon rabbits, a small group of diligent workers that have toiled and slaved for their more human-like masters since time immemorial.

There are the rare few Lunarians who think differently about the lessons they've been taught. They tend to keep to themselves, speaking openly only when their peers seek to wipe out entire races or species.

One such individual currently strolls near the perimeter of the Capital's barrier, which rests adjacent to a sparkling silver-blue sea. She has short silver hair which is braided in the back, and quiet red eyes. Her skin is so pale, that it takes little to make a blush appear in her cheeks. Her garments consist of a knee length rose-purple dress with the rim cut into a pattern of jagged arrows pointing left, and a grey-brownish vest with a few symbols strewn about her shoulders and waist. On her right shoulder blade is a single grey wing twice as big as her head. It looked dismembered, but could still flutter with ease.

She walked along the sea's sandy coast and peered out at the glistening, watery horizon. Her left hand was up near her mouth, with three fingers covering it and the last one touching her nose. Her expression showed a reclusiveness that didn't desire to be disturbed, yet as she crossed this path for the thousandth or so time, something felt... _different_.

The sea's surface was gently rippling as it reflected the light of the stars and the visage of the impure blue-green rock high above. She whiffed the scent of fresh peach trees that surrounded her backside, and her stomach nibbled at her mind with hunger.

"Not now..." She carefully whispered, her hunger fended off by the more pressing presence of goosebumps on the back of her left hand.

"Hmm..." It might be little more than a brief stint of unease, she thought, as it hadn't been that long ago that they had been invaded by the devilish Goddess Hecatia and the vengeful Junko.

She kept walking along the beaten path with a sluggish pace, keeping an eye on the sea for any abnormalities. Along the way, there was a group of moon rabbits all wearing the same black business suits while practicing with their muskets. Yet there was a clear lack of focus, as they fumbled to-and-fro and were mostly goofing off, almost as if on purpose.

But the moment she showed her face, the rabbits yelled her name in reverence "L-Lady Sagume!" and collapsed into an organized box-shaped heap of bowing bunnies.

 **The Tongue-Twisted Goddess of Fortune: Sagume Kishin**

Sagume's expression didn't shift in the slightest as she calmly asked, "Where is Lady Yorihime?"

"S-She had to report back to the Capital!" The head bunny speedily detailed.

"I see..." Sagume closed her eyes and hummed for a bit, "Have there been any intruders?"

"Its been quiet all day!" One replied with a very high-pitched wail.

"Are you sure?" She persisted only due to an incident a while back involving a pink-haired ghost that snatched away a very important jar of sake from under their noses.

"Absolutely! Everything's c-clear!" Their fear secured their sincerity, though it didn't leave Sagume feeling any less uncomfortable.

"Continue your training." She requested with a firm voice as she gently turned away and retraced her steps.

She turned to look past the bountiful forest of peaches and saw the many towering skyscrapers and traditional Japanese buildings that littered the Capital. They looked similar enough to those on Earth to be recognized, yet different enough to fit the divine, technologically advanced Lunarian culture. As Sagume looked at those buildings, she felt her body heat up, as though she was standing in the presence of the sun.

"An ill omen," She plucked the words carefully from her mind as she gazed shiftily past her right shoulder, "I've felt this before."

The winds changed around the middle of the sea. The waters were now being pushed in tiny circles that slowly grew bigger as a breach in time-space expanded above it.

Sagume faced the breach and slowly lowered her hand to her chin as someone walked out of it. To her, this human wearing a red shirt, blue jeans and short brown hair was a complete stranger. But we know him as Alex Whiter, the Elemental Overlord, the Phoenix of Destruction.

His hands were tucked into his pockets as he walked out, then wiggled free as he stepped along the water's surface with his head held high and his eyes wide open. The breach closed, and the dismal light of the sun cast a pale shadow over his body.

He stopped after a few steps and looked straight at Sagume as she inquired in a gently hostile tone, "Who are you?"

He didn't respond with words, but with a slight grin. And at that moment, the water rippled faster around his feet, forming miniature waves. Sagume curled her fingers inward and felt them trembling just a bit. She clasped them shut to stop the sensation, then addressed Alex again.

"I see. I knew I had felt this before..." Her voice grew evermore hostile, "You're the Elemental Overlord. A new one, to be precise."

As her eyes squinted partway shut she raised her chin up and pressed him further, "What business do you have here?"

Alex chuckled as he closed his fists and zipped straight across the water in an instant. A flash of amber reflected off Sagume's eyes as she swung her wing up before her face to block his sword.

The waters behind him were forced back, while the trees behind her were pushed around like caught up in a hurricane. All the while, Alex kept pressing forward with a one handed grip and a wide, toothy grin.

Sagume slid back a couple inches and looked entirely unamused as she remarked, "Ah, so you are settling his affairs."

Sagume brushed Alex away and set a few golden lasers no thicker than her thumb after him. He flipped back onto the water, tumbling his way past them and splashing down atop the peak of the water pushed away moments ago.

The water rushed towards Sagume, who levitated a couple feet above it and planted her hand firmly before her mouth. With a clear focus she sent a couple more lasers at Alex, which he batted out of the sky with the back of his blade.

Then boiling hot water erupted below her, forcing her to shift left then right in quick succession, evading the sting of even a single drop. Alex thrust his left hand out to offset her balance with a bolt of lightning, but with just her wing she blocked the whole thing.

Millions of volts tickled her crystallic feathers like static. She then dropped the wing slightly and saw that the boy had vanished entirely. The winds shifted behind her, and in the next second she swung her wing back and wrapped its tip around Alex's wrist to hold his sword at bay.

"One wing taken by your ilk was one too many." She murmured with a subdued scorn before pushing him away and turning around.

He lost his sword and clapped his hands immediately, bringing two hefty curves of rock up to crush her flat like a pancake. She floated over them and summoned a few mystical ruby orbs to attack Alex with a barrage of cold diamonds.

He swung around her clockwise and threw fireballs towards her until he was back over the sea. Once she caught him in her line of sight he bolted forward and threw everything he had into a single blistering hot punch.

Thankfully Sagume's back weathered the blow enough to keep her from crashing into the forest. She turned around and immediately threw out a couple large golden orbs, which unleashed a flurry of lasers in an inescapable funnel.

Alex crossed his arms and grunted as a few of them was all it took to push him back fifteen feet. He then cocked a grin and swung them down, calling flames before his palms. The next second, a loud "Bang!" came from the left and caused his eye to squeeze shut as something cold and tiny bounced off the side of his face.

"W-We're here to provide assistance Lady Sagume!" Yelled a brave if foolish moon rabbit as her squadron fired upon Alex with their steadily cocked muskets.

Alex floated there and shook his head in dismay as the bullets continued to bounce off him, then slammed his left hand up and knocked the moon rabbits down like bowling pins, no elements necessary.

Sagume raised her right hand up and quickly etched a silver five-pointed star in the air. The water below Alex twisted up like the petals of a rose and then in a flash his body was encased in a foggy blue crystal. She then turned towards the rabbits and calmly remarked, "Head to the Capital. Alert Lady Yorihime."

"What about you Lady Sagume?" One of the bunnies asked as they stood up.

But any reassurance on her end would merely twist the whims of fate out of her favor. So with a silent dismissal she turned back to Alex, who broke free as easily as flexing his muscles, like she expected. She floated above the tree and brushed her wing out, a glint of silver flashing upon the tips of her feathers.

From that light came a rain of sparkling beams that followed Alex as he flew to the right, inadvertently running straight into a glyph that Sagume had laid a second beforehand. The glyph forced his body upright and bounded his limbs together as though strung together by invisible strings.

He gnashed his teeth together and grunted with every attempt to tug himself free. During his strenuous flailing, he caught a glimpse of the moon rabbits turning tail for the forest and started smirking. Sagume struck him with a few more lasers, but now he kept still and took in a deep, deep breath.

Closing his eyes, he focused on his bindings and the arctic chill of the moon. After exhaling a frosty fog from his mouth, he was able to see his bindings clearly and quickly froze them over to easily snap them apart like brittle bark. Before he'd be ensnared again, he brought his right fist down upon the glyph and shattered it.

Sagume was only mildly impressed, and continued to throw out beams with nary a show of exertion on her part. Alex twisted his whole body around to launch his sword out with all his might, where it then spun like a sawblade to intercept Sagume's attacks.

He then threw both his arms out and raised the ground in a mile-high wall around the moon rabbits to keep them from reaching the forest. He then remained lurched over as he glared up at Sagume and called his sword back into his right hand, telling her in a gruffly blunt tone of voice, "You're my opponent, Sagume Kishin. Don't think I'll let you call for back-up."

"So, you will hurt me?" Sagume's choice of words was interesting to say the least, but her confidence in saying them bored Alex to tears.

After a deep yawn Alex smacked his lips, wiggled his arms a bit, then flew straight at his silvery foe. He swung with a blade lined with fire and eyes filled with scorn. Sagume weathered his attack with her wing and was dragged ten feet back. Alex came at her swinging some more and she deflected every strike the same way.

Alex let go of his sword and mentally guided it to keep swinging faster than before while he flipped behind Sagume and went for an uppercut aimed at the back of her head. She shifted it aside at the last second and glared back, then quietly shut her eyes and summoned more crystals to her defense.

Four in total surrounded and shot diamonds into his body. A few breeched his skin before he could retreat and swing his arms together, which forced the crystals to slam into each other and shatter.

Sagume brought down a ray of heavenly light to force Alex's sword to the ground then turned around with right hand already raised. He flew in close and grabbed her wrist, trying to push it back down. But the frailty of her appearance was a deception of the highest caliber, for she was able to resist his goliath strength and drag her hand up before his face.

With a snap of the fingers she created a mellow burst of silver energy that repelled Alex back first into another glyph, which grabbed onto his arms and legs and stretched them out so the pain'd keep him from fighting back. Yet he was smiling even as his tendons were being pushed to their limit.

Sagume lowered her left hand in front of her chest and pinched two fingers together while her right hand looked to be tugging at the back of an invisible bowstring. Silver energy formed into an arrow between her fingers, which she launched without a word.

Alex opened his mouth and called his sword back so he could bite down onto the handle and swing it at the arrow. Its impact forced the back edge dangerously close to his face, but held off the arrow long off for its energy to disperse.

He panted a bit afterwards and spit his sword straight at Sagume's face, where it managed to cut off a couple strands of hair. She glared at him some more and shifted her head to avoid it boomerranging back into his right hand, which broke right through the shackle while she got distracted.

After he broke the whole glyph he laid his sword by his hip and set it ablaze, relaxing after one last sigh of relief.

"No wonder you're one of the Lunarian Sages." What should have been reverence came off merely as mockery in her mind, and while solemnly closing her eyes she spoke with near equal amounts of venom.

"You are different from the other one. Weaker, yes?"

Alex's smile went flat and he pointed his sword up at Sagume's face. She peeked at his defiance and commented, "Your flames will burn me, that is your intention?"

"Hahaha!" He reared his head back and tried to contain his laughter, only to fail. Sagume's stance didn't change until he gave her a lowly glare and remarked with a humored, confident tone, "I thought lying was considered...Impure?"

She didn't reply. With a hearty guffaw he combed his frontal bangs back with his fingers and lunged forward with his blazing sword slicing down. Sagume glided back and swung her wing up to pepper Alex with silver beams. But every one that hit only stalled his advance the tiniest bit, and he was once again in her face dragging the sword dangerously close to her body.

She managed to escape, but found her heartbeat increasing. She flipped over him as he attacked horizontally this time, then surrounded him with sphere of gold lasers to give her time to escape. He swung his arms down and dealt with the attacks with a burst of power, the light glistening like sparkling snow around him.

He turned around and swung his left hand up, violently ripping a dozen peach trees from the ground to throw in Sagume's path. She evaded them as nimble as a feather, even going so far as to plant her feet on one of them to rub it in.

Alex swung his arms down to send that one tumbling around and get her off. He then spread his arms out and flames burst around his body, with the trees combusting as well. He gathered them together and threw them down at Sagume.

This time when she swung her wing up, a shield glyph came to her aid, pushing the ashen splinters and embers out of her way. Alex charged in like a bull and swung his left fist at her, causing her to swerve her head aside. But as his elbow passed by her neck he bent it in and wrapped her in a chokehold, slamming his forehead into her nose to keep her from budging.

Then he ignited his other fist and brought it straight up into her gut with all he's got. She lightly coughed and her eyes bulged, after which she snapped her fingers and repelled Alex with a burst of energy. Then she bombarded him with a dozen beams at once, which he deflected by swirling his sword around in circles.

Goosebumps riddled her left hand as she covered her mouth with it. Narrowly squinting her eyes, she remarked in a voice of certainty, "You move quite a lot. Almost as though you are as fast as Raijin's lightning."

Alex raised his brows then gave a coy smirk. He leapt back and swung his sword out, dispersing the flames into a rain of large fireballs. Sagume countered with a set of golden lasers, which she coiled around him in an attempt to hamper his movements.

He tumbled past them and threw is sword out. She deflected it skyward with her wing, which her rose to grab and swing back down. Sagume evaded it and he slashed at her in broad strokes, giving little room for her to evade from a stationary position.

She ducked under a particularly rough slash and flapped her wing out, using a burst of energy to hurtle Alex back. He turned his sword around and stabbed into the glyph behind him to shatter it. Then he sliced the air to send a huge wave of fire at his slippery foe.

She floated over it, then flew to the left as the second one came vertically. Alex then thrust his sword up and down to call lightning upon Sagume. After escaping its wrath she zipped back towards the Lunar Capital with Alex in hot pursuit.

She kept up the laser bombardment from all around her body, and while Alex managed to keep them off him it halted his advance greatly each time. He propelled himself forward with a burst of air from his feet and flew over and swerved past the beams, responding with flame beams of equal size.

While Sagume evaded them, Alex found they served a better purpose that way, for he guided the flames into creating a single massive orb behind her. By the time she saw it had grown to the size of a hot air balloon, Alex was able to close the distance and place a palm on her chest to shove her into it.

The fire burst with a bright crimson flash and expelled Sagume towards the ground, where only a few barely visible burn marks marred her clothes. She skid across the silky stone path leading to the Capital's heavily armored front gates, stopping just a couple feet from the steps.

She was greatly suspect of what was going on as she poked her head up to look at the boy, and once more said something rather odd, "All of your elements appear to be working perfectly. Your technique is without flaw."

Alex swung his left hand up by his shoulder and yelled bluntly, "Give it a rest already! I **know** what you're trying to do. Its a waste of time!"

Sagume raised her left brow and stood upright, testing things a little further by asking him, "You know a lot, do you now?"

With a rough smirk he boasted, "Your power is to reverse a situation with your words. So you thought you could stop my powers by speaking oddly."

He then thrust a thumb up to his chest and declared, "Sorry! Reality warping? You're out of luck! That kinda shit doesn't work on me!"

Sagume felt her legs trembling slightly. It was doubtful that he'd willingly divulge his secret, but this was a little...concerning. She closed her eyes and spoke softly, "Very well."

Alex drew his sword back and set it ablaze before diving straight down at Sagume. She stood her ground and peeked only one eye open as a figure wearing a dark red dress cut in and effortlessly blocked Alex's sword with a sword thinner than the width of her arm. She held it one-handed behind her head and hunched forward to put her back into supporting it.

Alex wasn't too surprised, just peeved.

The lithe warrior was a female with light blue hair tied lovingly into a ponytail thanks to a yellow ribbon. Her eyes were brown and sharp, with a gaze that could cut through the finest folded steel with ease. The dress she wore had its left strap cut off, and underneath it was a white short-sleeved blouse. Finally, a loose belt with a gold sword-shaped buckle was wrapped from her left hip to just above her right knee.

"Lady Sagume! Sorry I am late!" Her voice was slightly deep and full of reverence. While firm, it also displayed her masterful discipline and iron will, which was akin to a samurai.

"I let the intruder get too close. But you managed to catch the commotion. As expected of one of your position, Lady Yorihime." Sagume responded.

This interloper was certainly one of the more interesting Lunarians. She was not only a master swordswoman, but she was sharp. Very, very sharp. If it is possible for her to know something, she'll learn it almost instantly. She may honestly be more of a threat than Sagume.

And yet? Alex was smiling. His heart was racing. He repelled off the woman's blade and landed gently on the ground, grabbing his sword in both hands and propping it before his waist. The woman turned her body sideways and placed her sword at the hilt on her hip, cautiously keeping one hand hovering over it. Her name, as Alex bothered to recall, was...

 **The Brilliant Swordsman of the Gods: Watatsuki no Yorihime**

"I'll hold the intruder at the gates! You handle the retreat, Lady Sagume!" Yorihime swung her left hand up and directed her superior with the utmost respect, and with a silent nod Sagume floated over the gate.

Yorihime then pierced right through Alex's body with an icy glare and demanded of him, "State your purpose, intruder."

Alex flashed a smug grin and taunted her, "What? Your parents never tried to scare you with boogie tales about me?"

Yorihime stabbed her sword into the ground with one hand, and a garden of blades immediately surrounded Alex's body. His body froze up, and his will to move around swiftly dwindled. She then raised her hands up beside her shoulders and smiled, "This is the power of Lord Gion. If you do not wish to incur his wrath, then I would suggest you answer my questions."

"Hehehe. You could at least try and be a little more accomodating." Alex slowly squeezed his right hand, and the blades bent back until they all snapped in twine and let him walk out completely unimpeded.

Yorihime raised her brows, then widened her eyes a bit as she pulled her sword from the ground, "I see. You are the one referred to as 'The Butcher of Sin'. You are a lot...younger than the history books suggested."

"That's because I'm not the same guy. I _guess_ you could call me his successor." He stated with a nonchalant bob of the head.

"Different body, same arrogance," Yorihime stated plainly while drawing her sword close to her hip and telling him, "You should have never come back here. I will deal with you before you even catch a glimpse of the inner Capital."

"I look forward to seeing you **try**." Alex licked the side of his lips and leapt so hard off the ground it tore up ten feet behind him.

He attacked Yorihime with a simple downward slash that she short hopped back to evade. She drew her blade in a flash and slipped past Alex's arm to cut his chest. The blood drawn splashed out in a thinly lasting wave as he retreated, swiping his hand along the wound to cauterize it.

While his hand burned bright, he called a giant pillar of fire underneath her feet. She leapt off the stairs and spiraled around with her blade electrified. She penetrated Alex's defenses like she was a drill and sent millions of volts surging through his body. Then with a graceful landing in a kneeling pose she closed her eyes and turned around, aiming cleanly for his neck.

He swung his right hand up and snatched it midslice, squeezing it tight in hopes of breaking it. Yorihime let go of the blade and her arms suddenly became consumed in dark red flames. She pushed them straight out and Alex threw her sword up while bouncing far back in retreat.

" _Can't touch those flames. They're nothing like my own."_ He gripped his sword in both hands and looked up, where Yorihime vaulted up high and snatched her blade upside-down. She descended with the blade's tip aimed for his right shoulder, and managed to cut into it even as he swerved aside.

The two landed on the ground at the exact same second, but it was her who rushed forth first. She attempted to stab his heart, which he blocked with the blunt edge of his blade, and then raised the sword up to cut the bottom of his chin.

The action was smooth and precise, as the blood she drew was then splashed against his eyes to cut off his vision. She zipped behind him as he swung down, but in doing so alerted him via gentle tremors in the ground. He dug his right heel back and launched the stone tile she was standing on upward.

She hopped right off it and turned around, steadying her blade before her face and planting two fingers against the edge, "Divine serpent of heavenly rain and glistening snow...I invoke your name to mesmerize my enemy. Obey, Kuraokami!"

A veil of white snowflakes covered the whole battlefield, its presence thick enough to keep even Alex from seeing his enemy. He kept his sword nailed to his hip and sensed out Yorihime's power.

" _Just because you're hiding in the snow doesn't make you invisible."_ The hairs on the back of his neck stuck up on end and he spun around, fending off an unseen steel blade. The flash of light shadowed Yorihime's frame for a second, but she was off before he could attack twice.

He turned around and matched her strike again, but this time she followed through with a diagonal stroke towards his left hip. With a rough "Tsk!" he waited for Yorihime to strike again, and this time not only blocked her blade but planted his foot down on his toes to keep her down.

He leaned in closer, imagining he was smugly smiling into her face, only to have a blade impaled through his abdomen that left him speechless. Yorihime spoke through the wintery clout with a clear and concise voice, "Totsuka-no-Tsurugi was originally crafted by Takemikazuchi. It means 'Sword With the Length of Ten Fists', and was used by Susanoo to slay the demon Orochi."

"History repeats, and yet another demon shall fall to its steel." Yorihime could be heard tugging at the blade to get it to budge, but Alex had already hardened the skin around his wound with a metal similar to what the blade was made of.

With a grin trickling with blood, he laughed at her a bit and remarked, "Its not going to be that easy. If you want to kill me..."

A wind was roused at violent speeds, funneling all the snow into a tornado surrounding just the two of them as Alex yelled excitedly, "You'll have to do much better than that, Lunarian!"

Quickly condensing the snow into a pillar no bigger than a finger, Alex set it all loose in a chilling explosion that exposed Yorihime's presence once more. She stood upright at the edge of the stairs with only her original blade at her side. Alex cauterized the wound, then flicked his hand around like the previous proceedings were just a warm-up.

Yorihime gripped the handle of her blade tightly and attempted to hammer the difference in skill into his skull, "There are millions of techniques at my disposal. You host a myriad of powers yourself, impure Butcher, but the gap between us is as grand as that between the Moon and the Sun."

Alex closed his eyes and boasted, "Your prideful of your ability to defeat any foe with just one or two techniques. I'm not remembering that wrong, am I?"

Yorihime paused in silence and took noticed of what her enemy was saying. He tapped his forehead with one finger and chuckled, "But off the top of my head, you've used five."

He opened his eyes with a sneer and remarked, "So don't get cocky. I'm not some garden variety Shrine Maiden looking to lose."

"What do you even hope to accomplish with this reckless, thoughtless assault? Even if you somehow managed to get by me, the others would do you in in the blink of an eye."

"You're right," Alex lazily shrugged his shoulders and sighed, "Even **I'm** not confident that I could take on every single Lunarian all at once."

He lifted his head up high and flashed a smirk that left Yorihime feel an ominous shift in the air around her, "That's why I'm the dis-trac-tion."

"...What did you just say?" While she mulled over this troubling sentence, Sagume had finished organizing all the Lunarians towards the center of the Lunar Capital, where the grand Moon Palace stood untouched by the slightest flaw in its architecture.

"Lady Yorihime shall stay behind. Once she's done, she will open the way to the Dream World to retrieve us." After the mildest reassurance that everything would turn out alright, she faced the Palace's front doors and held her left hand out.

The puzzled murmurs behind her did not mar her concentration, yet for some reason, she could not open the rift to the Dream World.

"...What is going on here?" She murmured.

Outside the Capital, Alex closed his eyes and started reaching for his right pocket. Memories from a few hours ago stirred in his mind as he started to smile triumphantly.

 _Alex stood before two people hiding in the shadows of a hot, hellish realm with arms crossed and his expression as stern as could be. He'd created hot flames, but this place was something else. He couldn't stop sweating, and thus made the conversation quick._

" _I came to ask for your help."_

" _Oh, you're back! Neat!" A person said in a jolly tone._

" _You wanted my help dealing with the Lunarians? You got it. But...if we do this, it'll be my plan we go with, got it?"_

" _No complaints here! It's like, totally a good idea to get some fresh perspective!"_

" _...Your original plan of swarming the Lunar Capital with Fairies was sound...Except you didn't account for them turning tail like cowards."_

" _Yeah, that might've been a_ _ **teeny**_ _bump in the road."_

" _What if I told you that I could prevent them from running away?"_

" _I'd say 'I'm all ears!'"_

" _...I'll sneak around the moon undetected and use my Gaia Temporis to close any rift, portal or gap they might have at their disposal. Then I'll emerge and alert the first Lunarian I can find. With any luck I'll get someone revered enough to get them to attempt a retreat into the Dream World. But when they fail to escape, that's when I'll bust open a portal for you two and the army of Fairies you'll bring with."_

" _Ooooohoohoo. How delightfully devilish. Cage 'em like rats and then wipe them all out, is that it? And just how many Fairies will we be needing?"_

" _...All of them. I don't want a single one left behind in Gensokyo, Hell, or anywhere in-between. We do this, and we do this right."_

In the present, Yorihime had caught notice of Alex's movements too little, too late. He tapped the Gaia Temporis in his pocket and took a bit of pleasure in taunting her ignorance, "Today...The Lunarians shall meet their end!"

Sagume reached out once more, and was blown back as a massive rift in time-space shattered wide open. Hundreds upon hundreds of Fairies spilled out from the seams and immediately went wild in the Lunar Capital, playing around like this was a simple kindergarden playground.

"Fairies again...? Then this can only mean..."

"Heeeeelloooo again Lunarians!" A chipper voice echoed from the center of the rift, drawing all Lunarians' stiff, frightened gazes towards it as two bigger folk floated their way out.

One was Hecatia Lapislazuli, the mischievous Goddess of Hell, and the other was Junko, the embodiment of pure wrath. Hecatia crossed her arms against her chest and relished the chaos unfolding with a casual smile.

"So this time we meet face-to-face Sagume Kishin. You were so rude the last time, what with hiding yourself away without so much as a 'Hello'."

Sagume's unease continued to rise, and for the first time in her life her heart beat faster than normal. Hecatia peered both eyes open and froze the divine amanojaku with a hollow gaze, "Such a shame we're meeting on the day of your funeral."

With a wide and blissful grin, she leaned down closer and whispered into her ears, "Welcome to **my** Hell, Lunarian. I hope you enjoy _our_ visit~"

 _Next Time: Rage of the Gods_


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: The Fall of Impurity**

The once pristine skies of the Lunar Capital were now being plagued with a locust swarm of Fairies. They pittered about with their tiny wings and irritating voices, treating the divine lands as little more than a playground to fool around in. The Lunarians were drawn to their presence with eyes as wide as dimes, and their plentiful little shadows left them trembling in their boots.

Hecatia watched on with her arms crossed against her chest and a tip-top smile across her face. Gently she reached her arms up at the chaotic swarm and remarked, "This totally reminds me of one of those plagues that happened in Egypt long, long ago."

Sagume's glare was clear as day even with the goddess' chin raised up high. Hecatia looked down with a demeanor bereft of malice and saw the divine amanojaku trembling at her kneecaps, "You don't look so good. Is it like, because of all the life that's in the air?"

Hecatia waved a finger past her and Sagume looked back. Many Lunarians looked as fit as fiddles and had scars to prove their survival in many furious battles...Yet they were collapsing onto the floor like wobbly dominos, their hands clasping around their arms and legs in a desperate attempt to scrape off this "infection" that dominated the air.

Sagume's heart beat faster, jumping two beats forward at once when Hecatia positioned her chin atop her shoulder and whispered in her ear, "So do you fear death, Sagume Kishin...Or do you fear **me**?"

Sagume spun around and whipped the goddess in the face with her wing, forcing her to make a hasty yet nonchalant retreat. She closed her eyes and weaved a wicked smile, then leaned her head back towards her silent companion and remarked, "Chang'e should be somewhere in the palace Junko. Go on, have some fun!"

"Ok Hecatia, I will." Junko said with a flaccid looking smile and hollow stare. As she slowly pivoted away and floated towards the palace, Sagume suddenly yelled, "After her!"

Two Lunarians, whose will stood stronger than iron, rose to their feet with spears in hand and rushed straight for Junko's back.

"SPLOTCH!"

The next second, their heads were turned to paste, with their blood and bone strewn atop Hecatia's planetary décor as she laid on her back and didn't pay her victims any heed. A drop of blood splashed against Sagume's face, shrinking her pupils into a downright pin-like shape.

"Hehehehehe!" Hecatia's devilish, playful laughter struck a nerve in the once docile amanojaku, who swung her right hand out and exclaimed, "Secure the portal behind her!"

Yet when faced with the blood that trickled between the plated crevices, the Lunarians' skin turned as pale as the surface they lived upon, and they tripped upon themselves fleeing for their very lives. Sagume was shocked, devastated almost, that her people would succumb so quickly to fear.

"Oh, what pain a sheltered un-life brings..." Hecatia said in a soothing voice as she shook the blood free from her shackled jewelry. Sagume threw over her shoulder a most wicked glare as the goddess yet taunted her more, "You like, really should've seen this coming. A monarchy built on xenophobia is basically like, the equivalent of asking the universe to point a gun at your head. Now's just when it decided it was time to fire!"

Hecatia pointed her thumb and pointer finger back and went "Pow!" as the thumb went down.

Sagume creased her eyes partway shut and brushed her wing aside, staring deep into the Goddess' jewel-like eyes as she stoically declared, "You won't get away with this."

"You sure you wanna say that?" Hecatia smiled and shrugged as she spun back upright and balanced her "planets" atop her palms, "Cause... _there's no taking that back now_."

Outside the Lunar Capital, Yorihime briefly discarded her focus on Alex to look back at her home. The maelstrom of Fairies caught her eye like the stars in the sky normally would. It was impossible to ignore, and just nearly as impossible to fathom.

"How could this have escaped my notice?" She wondered to herself, looking somewhat blankly towards the ground. She then swung her head back towards her foe and tried to ask, "What did you DO?"

Only to be met with his right palm slamming dead center into her face, which dragged her off the ground as the two went flying straight into the front gates. Alex broke through with a measly effort and started to descend for the ground while declaring, "I told you! This is the day your race dies, Lunarian!"

"Grrr!" Yorihime clung her sword tighter and yelled, "I call upon your strength, Lord Sarutahiko!"

Inches from the ground, Yorihime's arms and legs suddenly became surrounded in a golden veil, which she used post-haste to clock Alex in the gut with her foot. He blacked out for a moment and felt his stomach nearly collapse into paste, but she was far from done. She slammed her right palm into the ground for support and kicked Alex fifty feet into the air, then launched herself up behind him and spun around, delivering a resounding kick to his spine.

The sonicboom that erupted from the impact happened a second after Alex cratered the ground, throwing debris all across the wayside. Yorihime slashed her sword out so vigorously that it created a gale, then as she gently descended for the ground she proclaimed, "Mighty Honoikazuchi, char this intruder to ash!"

The light at the edge of the crater was swallowed up into a devilish hellfire that quickly transformed into a seven-headed dragon with lightning surrounding each of its necks. The beast opened its mouths and set the entire crater ablaze in an instant, turning it into a cauldron that'd make even the onis of Hell sweat in seconds.

But to Alex, this was but a summer's breeze, and after standing back up he raised his sword up past the flames. One azure flash later, and a highly compressed wave of water has cut right through the beast's heads. He knew the task was only so simple because the god's power wasn't fully manifested, but the look of surprise on Yorihime's face was still _satisfying_ to behold.

She whipped her sword down to her hip and bolted the moment she touched the ground. Alex leapt out of the crater as she dove in after him, but she simply slashed her blade up in a flash when she landed. Managing to cut his chest a centimeter deep, Alex quickly hopped across the ground while cauterizing the wound.

His opponent was a relentless pursuer, her gaze as perfect as an hawk's. He knew speed wasn't going to cut it, she was simply leagues faster than him. He made his way towards the city and past the remaining trees, pitifuly throwing fire mines in the air to force her to waste time weaving around them.

She didn't pause to adjust herself even once. Her body was like a bolt of light bending around a black hole. It moved with such perfect curvature, and when she was through her target was but a foot away. Alex drew his sword and blocked two of her attacks in quick succession, then stabbed his sword down to smash the ground and force her back.

She swung her blade out from her hip and called upon the power of Ishikori-dome no Mikoto, using the goddess' divine mirror as a platform to vault over the gravelly debris and then stab forward with a spear of lightning forged through the power of Raijin.

Alex slapped the spear into the nearest building, where it exploded and took out a ten-foot wide chunk of metal. Alex then folded his arms back and began charging flames between his palms. Yorihime was ready to divert her focus into defending herself, and began the incantation to summon Mikoto anew.

Yet her voice was cut off, silenced by the forceful act of vines wrapping around her legs and slamming her face-first against the ground. Alex immediately thrust his hands out to send a beam of flame hurtling her way. Yorihime grabbed onto her sword and stabbed the ground, refusing to yield to his power.

The flames were suddenly stopped and erased down to the very atom merely a couple feet from her face. Alex had to squint in confusion for a moment in order to see what had happened. There was something resembling a gale where the flames had suddenly stopped, but it made no sound and it kicked up not even a scrap of dust. There was only one person who could be responsible for this interference...

"Are you having trouble, dear sister?" A soft, saintly voice spoke up behind Yorihime, and then a second later the vines that strangled her legs were cut asunder by a mesmerizing dance of tiny wind blades.

The person then strolled on by with a gentle smile and impeccable posture. Her hair could be described as a long flowing sea of golden sand, with her eyes glistening with a similar hue. She wears the same kind of dress as the one she calls "sister", only hers is dark blue with the strap covering only her left shoulder, and her belt extending from the right to left with a mirror acting as her buckle. Atop her head rests a white bonnet with a red ribbon, and all the while she fans herself with a plain, white-as-snow paper fan.

The second of the Watatsukis, and the elder of the two...Her princess-like naivete and calming aura should not be considered a sign to let your guard down, lest she sweep your impurity away with but a wave of her fan. Alex hunched over slightly and grinned from cheek-to-cheek. He wasn't expecting to have to fight both sisters at the same time, but the prospect was growing more exciting the longer he thought about it.

 **The Moon Princess Who Floats Between Sea and Mountains: Watatsuki no Toyohime**

Yorihime climbed to her feet with blade in hand and remarked, "This isn't your fight sister. I can handle this Butcher on my own."

"Relax. You're overthinking things and making mistakes." Toyohime said while tilting her head back. Yorihime then leaned a fist up by her hip and gave her the stink eye, "How can you be so calm sister? The Lunar Capital is being polluted by a terrible blight!"

Toyohime looked up at the sight of Fairies and her grin shifted just slightly ajar, "While it is true they infect our lands with their sordid 'gift' of life...They are but bees flying aimlessly at the heed of their queen."

She folded her fan and thrust it heavily towards Alex's face, meeting his fiery fierce stare with a disarming smile as she rationalized, "As soon as we remove the perpetrators from the Capital, it shall be but a simple matter to lure the guideless Fairies away from our lands."

Her eyes creased a little more as she absolved any uncertainty her words may have birthed by saying, "And surely, whatever magic these intruders have used to seal us in will certainly be undone as well."

Yorihime closed her eyes and remarked, "You got a point. The Fairies only came after the Butcher reached into his right pocket. He must have a relic that controls space-time stashed away in there."

"Then its safe to say that my assertion is correct. Wouldn't you agree, dear sister?"

"I would've figured it out on my own, you know." Yorihime said, sneaking in a sigh of relief as her big sister giggled behind her fan.

"You're probably right. But this does expedite the process a lot, wouldn't you agree?"

"Ahem!" Alex roughly coughed to grab their attention, then started rubbing the back of his head like he was just casually chatting away with a pair of friends, "There's just one teeny tiny problem with your plan..."

He stuck his chin up and grinned, "You have to _kill me_ first."

Toyohime unfolded her fan and said back to him, "Everyone dies someday."

Alex's cheeks puffed out and he swung over unable to contain his laughter. After going at it for a bit until he started to tear up, he wiped the left side of his face dry and said, "I-I'll be honest, I could've just turned tail and left you all to die to the Fairies...But man, would I have missed out on THAT zinger!"

After a little more chuckling, Alex suddenly felt an immense pressure coming from Toyohime and slid straight to the left before her fan atomized the ground he stood on. She laid it out before her chest and with a narrow glare remarked, "Your predecessor escaped unharmed... _ **We**_ won't be making that same mistake."

Alex swung his sword out and rushed straight for Toyohime, foolish though that may have seemed. She carefully stepped back and kept her fan up for now, preferring to attack with a series of beams coming out of rifts around her body.

Alex leapt over them and readied his sword behind his head, only to be blindsided by a couple beams hitting his wrists and forcing the sword loose. He then looked around and saw that he had suddenly become surrounded by a tight cage of mirror, which reflected the beams repeatedly through his body, battering him around for a few seconds.

Yorihime leapt up and cleaved her sword down across Alex's chest, knocking him towards the ground. Alex grounded himself hard and tore up the floor for many yards before stopping. He then lunged at Yorihime as she tried to follow through and punched her square in the chin.

Yet it was HIS knuckles that buckled down under pressure, for she had coated her chin in metal by channeling the power of Kanayama-hiko for a brief moment. Then she used the bottom of her sword to send Alex back down, where Toyohime swung her fan immediately towards him.

He clawed his right hand upward and raised the ground all the way between the two of them to slow the atomization power, but that merely bought him a second. Enough time to hop away, not enough to mount a defense against Yorihime.

She came right at him and cut the tendons from his left wrist, leaving the hand limping around by his hip. He swung his other arm up and recalled his sword, preventing her from doing the same twice. He then thrust his right leg up into her gut to blow her back, throwing a wave of fire in pursuit.

As she ended up knocked down temporarily, Alex set his sights back on Toyohime and ran straight for her, making a hard weave left when she attempted to wave her fan. He kicked his feet hard against the ground and bolted straight for her, keeping his sword steadied like a jousting lance.

Toyohime folded her fan and gracefully leapt over him, a plethora of pristine thin onyx rope flying out of her dress. The rope somehow grabbed both of arms by the wrists and pulled them back to his hips. Then, as Toyohime landed, she grabbed the end of the rope and gave it a tug. The rest that had been thrown about wildly in the air just so happened to then perfectly constrain around Alex's arms and midsection, making his sword drop onto the back of his right foot upon him falling to his knees.

She held tightly onto the end of the rope and grinned as Alex jerked his head back to glare. She patted her peach colored lips with the tip of her fan and said, "It'd be a waste of time to try and break free. This rope, woven from imperceptibly thin fibers, restricts the movements of the impure."

Alex's eyelids drooped and he slowly began to shake his head. Then he began to sigh, almost out of pity, "You're kidding me right? Its just rope."

He swings his right foot up faster than she can blink. He just manages to cut the rope free from her grasp, managing to earn her interest in the process. Her curiosity keeps her from acting as Alex turns around and positions himself in the way of the sword's descent.

Yorihime yells the name "Takemikazuchi!" and throws the Totsuka-no-Tsurugi towards Alex's heart. He takes a deep breath in and shifts his body to the right, the blade slipping harmlessly underneath his arm, but denying him his freedom.

"Oh to hell with this then!" He firms his muscles up and quickly expands the heat from his body into a fiery burst that turns his bindings to ash. He then secures his blade and slashes backwards, kicking up a gale of dirt and dust to cover Yorihime's body.

She retaliates with the howling storm channeled by Susano'o's power, which throws Alex off his feet. Though he's able to resist the tempered gale, the strength of his swing is lessened when Yorihime comes jumping after him. He manages to succed in the clash only by the skin of his teeth, and gives the assured swordswoman a taste of raw firepower to throw her back.

After that unwieldy explosion Alex is ambushed from behind by Toyohime, who comes out swinging her fan. His heart threatens to break free from his chest as he clocks her in the gut and then tries to grab the fan from her hand. Yorihime collapses the storm around him to drag him down, rapidly sucking out the oxygen from his lungs once he's been pinned.

His powers had a limit on how long they could sustain him, but he managed to cut right through the storm with one vigorous swing of his blade. Then he stood right back up and grinned, holding back his body's urge to hunch over in pain.

Toyohime landed behind him, Yorihime in front of him, and the two didn't appear any worse for the wear.

" _I knew this was going to be tough, but I've barely gotten a scratch on either of them...Oh well, not like it matters much..."_ He kept up the tough act while slowly nudging his right fingers towards the triggers on his sword one at a time.

Toyohime boasted for a bit, as she had seemingly earned the right to do so, "You tried to exploit our weakness to 'life', so that we could die...But you are nowhere near as strong as the previous Butcher. Your plan was inevitably going to end in failure."

"The impure are born on Earth, and die on Earth. I do not say this to be cruel. It is simply the truth. But as you are here instead, I am the only one who can cleanse you without tainting the Capital with even more impurity. So hold still, as I-"

Alex was about to pull all seven triggers when Yorihime's eyes widened like a startled owl and she sprang into action, stabbing through the back of his right hand to force his sword out. Toyohime gawked for a moment as her sister swiped the blood off and remarked, "He was planning to do something with that sword...Something terrible, I could just feel it."

Alex noticed a lone sweat drop on the side of Yorihime's cheek and slowly raised his head to let out a sigh. It took a great deal of restraint not to say what was actually on his mind, "Yeah you're right...I'm probably not as strong as the old man was..."

He quickly glared back at Toyohime with a smirk and said, "But I'm a HELL of a lot slippier!"

The dirt below his feet swung up in a gritty cloud, making the two sisters cough as they worked together to blow it all away. But Alex had scurried off in the interval towards the city, leaving his sword behind on the ground. Yorihime laid her blade by her hip and prepared to speed after, when Toyohime quietly noted, "Would it be wise to leave his weapon behind, dear sister?"

Yorihime stabbed her blade down and used Lord Gion's power to bind the sword in place amongst a field of blades. Then with Raijin's power, she made her feet as fleet as lightning and hastened her pursuit of her foe. Toyohime tapped her chin with her fan and peeked down at the sword as she strolled by it.

Her face reflected off its amber surface, and seemed to speak with her, "Fascinating...So you are a sword forged by a god? Yet not one familiar to us..."

Meanwhile, Yorihime stopped amidst the desolate streets and looked around. Somehow, the boy had managed to run away. The buildings towered towards the heavens. He'd be anywhere, waiting to ambush her. But she was not about to let him get away with such a disgraceful act.

She closed her eyes and focused on her blade, wistfully calling upon the power of yet another god to aid her cause, "Yamato of spirit and soul, reveal to me the location of the intruder who runs afoul..."

Like a drop of water falling upon a gentle creek, the presence of Alex's soul appeared amidst a darkened field not too far to the right of her. Yet his soul was not alone. There were fifteen others gathered within his body, all as dormant as a hibernating bear.

"What kind of human are you..." She pondered but briefly, for soon the ground turned uneven beneath her feet from a brief tremor. She turned towards the building he hid behind, and its bottom had been punched clean off. The whole thing collapsed under its own weight straight towards her.

"Kanayama-hiko no Mikoto!" She firmly declared as she swung her blade towards the building, guiding the goddess' power to dissipitate a massive chunk of it away. The damage to the rest of the buildings behind her would have to go ignored for now, as she could Alex scurry away through the dust.

He turned back and grumbled at how hard it was to shake her, but more importantly, "Goddamn it, why isn't my sword responding?"

He concentrated on the area surrounding his blade and angrily grit his teeth at the presence of Lord Gion's power. He squeezed his fist tight, bending the blades away to free his own. Yet before his job was done, Toyohime was suddenly before him, jabbing him in the chest with the tip of her fan that she quickly unfurled.

" _Crap!"_ He widened his eyes and kneed her in the wrist, budging it out of alignment. He then grabbed her wrist in both hands and threw him overhead. Doing this with some torn tendons...probably wasn't the wisest play in his book.

"Ow ow ow!" He bemoaned as pain scraped throughout his nerves. Yorihime caught Toyohime in both arms without dropping her sword, then gently put her back down.

Alex swung his sweaty right arm out and snapped the last shackle on his blade in order to call it back. He grabbed tightly onto all seven triggers and Yorihime, with a brief flash of shock on her face, hastily stabbed the ground and yelled, "No!"

"You're too late!" All seven triggers were pulled as Alex yelled triumphantly, his voice carried throughout the entire Lunar Capital. The blades that erupted around his feet shattered like glass via a shockwave of power. The windows in the surrounding buildings exploded off their panes, and every Fairy that fluttered, every Lunarian that ran, they all stopped to watch the pillar of golden flames that had erupted in the center of the city.

It would even be seen from the Earth's surface, given time. The Watatsuki's stood their ground, but Yorihime's eyes were wide and frozen stiff. As Alex's feathery wings emerged from the pillar's frame, Toyohime waved her fan with a gentle flick of the wrist.

Alex had already leapt halfway towards them before they could blink, diving down with his body burning bright and both his arms swung out. As they shifted their heads up to greet him, he grabbed onto both their faces and pile drived them so hard into the ground that their legs shot up and the resulting shockwave destroyed the support of the buildings in the immediate vicinity.

Yorihime reacted quick as a whip by going for Alex's neck with her sword. It met with a wispy green shield, and she sealed her lips and gasped. Alex grinned as he could almost smell the fear sweating out of her skin. He then finally planted his feet down and hurtled them forward like hockey pucks.

Toyohime planted a hand atop her hat and instantaneously moved behind Yorihime, using her toes as a stopper to help prop her up. Alex charged across the street in a second with his fist swung back, and Toyohime swung her fan with a cold gaze.

The atomizing winds blew turbulently through the streets. It held Alex five feet away from them, while his shield protected him from harm. He tightly grinned and swung his fired up arms down, then clapped them together to knock Toyohime through the building.

"Sister!" Yorihime stood and dragged her sword right up, blocking Alex's vicious slash. The fire from his blade then cut past her and scarred the building. He pounded down at her blade repeatedly, cracking down her support bit by bit.

"Five seconds..." She whispered. Alex's next sword slash lingered a bit, as he wanted to force her blade into her face.

"Ame-No-Uzume!" She yelled, summoning the bright, blinding light of dawn to overwhelm Alex's eyes and make him reel back. Yorihime tried to retreat to find her sister, but the moment she turned her back proved to be a fatal mistake.

"You're not going anywhere!" Alex yelled in a grizzly voice as he squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed the back of Yorihime's head, dragging her up through the side of the building.

"F-Fujin!" She grunted with incredible effort. A powerful gale capable of clearing a mountain bare assaulted Alex, dragging him dozens of feet away while a blue shield came to protect him.

He brushed his wings forward, commanding the gale to serve a new master. And as his first order, he had it funnel back upon its previous owner and force her through the building, where she went tumbling out onto the rooftop behind it.

She stood up and stabbed her sword into the ground to stop while her heels rubbed up against the railing. Alex barreled through the building on an unstoppable rampage, giving Yorihime precious seconds to respond.

"Susano'o!" She raised her sword towards the heavens and was struck by thunder from a swift, raging storm. Her sword turned into the legendary blade Kusanagi, which retained its peerless onyx sheen even after all these years, while her body became draped in a sleek samurai's chestplate, shoulder pads, and pants.

She cleaved the air with a mighty swing, clashing against Alex's blade without faltering in her stance. She kept up the offensive with two swings just as fast as before, moving forward little by little each time. She then leapt and swung her sword down in one-hand, going for Alex's head.

He blocked it with the bare side of his blade and then let go to lunge his hand out, effortlessly firing a beam of fire bigger than her body. It was instantly reflected back via the Yata no Kagami mirror she called unto her left arm, forcing his yellow shield out of hiding.

Alex slid across the air and kicked the mirror with both his feet and, upon failing to put a dent in it, rose up and then drove a punch clean into her skull. The railing snapped like a twig and she went hurtling through multiple buildings towards the ground. Her armor kept the flinching to a minimum, thankfully.

She clocked the sparse period of time she needed to wait down to the picosecond then swung her sword to fire a rending slice of condensed pressure towards Alex. He spun right over it and bolted straight towards Yorihime, attempting to punch her in the face.

She raised her mirror to block it, so Alex simply went around her by slamming her between the walls of the building they just barreled through. He then gripped his fingers around the makeshift cage and dove straight for the ground, moving so fast that everything around him ignited.

He crashed into the ground right as Yorihime cut her way loose, diving between the split of rocks and attacking Alex head-on with a swift downward slice. Alex backed away and shot a very, very compressed air bubble at her body knocking her outside of the crumbling building.

Yorihime guided her blade through the air in a blinding fast stroke, cutting through the debris in her line of sight and managing to hit Alex's sword with the blade's tip. Alex let go of his blade and spun it around rapidly to push her away with wind.

The hairs on the back of her head grew cold, and without even glancing back she hopped over a sheet of ice that summoned increasingly taller stalactites. She landed atop the tallest one on one foot and glided her sword around in a circle. Her arm's movement were copied as phantasms until the golden ring was complete, upon which her technique was prepared.

Alex rammed his fist into the center of the ring and a barrier filled in the space inside of it. Alex's face twisted unamusingly as Yorihime murmured, "Kokujin: Yukikaze"

" _Are you fucking kidding me?"_ Deja vu then struck Alex harder than the slash Yorihime followed up with, which breached the shield and repositioned her on the ground twenty feet behind Alex in an instant. A white shield surrounded his body, but a lot of good that would do when he wound up ramming the ground at more than 1000 miles per hour. Even THAT disjointed his neck a little bit.

Yorihime slowly turned around and grit her teeth into a jaded scowl as she grumbled, "Even that didn't cut it..."

"There you are sister." Toyohime softly walked up behind her with fan waved before her face and her dress looking a bit roughed up.

"I heard all the commotion from the ground. How are you still having trouble with him?"

Yorihime squinted her eyes shut and had to try REALLY hard to fight the urge to say anything dismissive towards her sister as she opened them back up, "The Butcher's protected by a series of barriers. It doesn't seem like physical strength will be enough to break through."

"Hmmm, surely there must be a way, right? As much as it pains me to say it, not even the barrier I created for the Lunar Capital is unbreakable."

"Perhaps if I consulted Tenjin, I could discover a way, but..."

Toyohime lightly tapped her sister on the forehead and passed her by, "Say no more. I will keep the Butcher at bay while you learn what we need."

"Sister...!" Yorihime reached out, only to quickly withdraw. Alex started to pick himself up off the ground while rubbing the back of his neck.

"Gah...Son of a bitch I **felt** that!" His complaint was mild, like he had only bumped his knee. He turned around with a frumpy scowl, angering Yorihime a bit.

"Concentrate sister." Toyohime whispered before taking center stage.

Yorihime closed her eyes, dropped the hefty armor, and focused all her power into calling forth the god of knowledge, Tenjin. Toyohime tapped her chin a couple times then patted her fan down atop her palm, braving the harsh climate Alex projected until she was three feet away from him.

Her body sweated a little, a rare, curious yet exciting feeling to be sure. Then she delicately asked, "Can I bother you with a question, Elemental Overlord?"

He raised his brows and eased up a bit of the heat surrounding his body. He didn't feel any concern whatsoever as he scoffed "Go for it" and stood upright.

"What makes you think you can't be killed? You...are human, aren't you?" She gently closed her eyes and unfurled her fan before most of her face.

Alex leaned his head back and coughed up a dry laugh, "Human...Yeah. I 'look' human, I 'talk' human, I was 'born' human. So...that makes me a human, doesn't it?"

Toyohime's heart fluttered against her chest as Alex continued to slowly chuckle like he was on auto-pilot. He then grabbed the side of his head, pulling back the hair that was bothering his eyes so he could give the Lunarian a clear and concise glare, "You Lunarians took your existence for granted. Your masters spiked your kool-aid with so much propaganda about how tainted life and death is, that it has left you all irreversibly weak and paranoid whenever even the _slightest_ trace of either comes crawling up your doorstep."

Toyohime's glare grew more cross, yet Alex continued regardless, "I won't bore you with my story...But if there's one thing, one THING I learned throughout my life..."

He closed his eyes and quietly brought his hand back down to his side, squeezing it until his nails drew blood from the skin, "Its that death is a blessing, not a curse."

Toyohime closed her eyes and remarked, "I suppose a human **could** become naturally inclined to think that way..."

"But a Lunarian wouldn't. Not even if their life depended on it. Your pride is too great for that," Alex shook his arms up by his shoulders and remarked, "And _that's_ why you will never be able to kill me. Your sister has already figured out that much."

He flicked his hand out and Toyohime peered over shoulder. Yorihime's face was pale and she was having trouble standing upright. Her eyes were gazing blankly into a dark abyss of which there was no return, and it took a few attempts for her sister to reach.

"Yorihime!" She snapped rather bluntly, and Yorihime regained some semblance of normalty back.

"W-What...?" Spilled out of her lips sloppily.

"What did you learn?"

Yorihime looked down in silence and slowly shook her head. Toyohime's expression grew uneasy, the heat behind her rose, and then Alex cracked his knuckles and grit his teeth into a gnarled grin, "Alright...Break time's over."

He tried to sucker punch Toyohime in the spine but she gracefully flipped over him and attempted to bewilder him with her rope trick a second time. He burned it all to ash in an instant, but she was able to swing her fan to knock him down and spawn his brown shield.

Alex let himself fall and planted his palms down, shunting back to kick her square in the gut and launch her through the nearest building. Yorihime snapped to attention with a yell of "Sister!" and then angrily rushed Alex with her sword. She called upon the power of Lord Atago, consuming her blade in his divine flames as she attacked his back.

Alex twisted his legs back and snatched up her blade between his feet, then flung her whole body overhead after Toyohime. Toyohime landed safely upon the floor and caught her sister, whom immediately hopped off in spite of her worried inquiry, "Is everything ok?"

"Keep attacking! We'll break through eventually!" Yorihime wildly slashed the divine flames through the building down to where Alex stood. The ground turned into a carved up mess in seconds, and would have gotten worse had Toyohime not restrained her sister with a firm grip of the elbow.

"Calm yourself!" She raised her voice, looking her square in the eyes, "We're going to win this war sister. Everything will be ok."

Yorihime looked out the building and everything she saw left her unconvinced. To make matters worse, Alex blasted aside the divine flames with a casually summoned, turbulent wind, and immediately came after them. Toyohime swung her fan out to attack Alex head on, causing his icy-blue shield to form. She kept swinging to hold him back, annihilating the entire ground beneath him in the process.

This gave Yorihime a chance to recollect herself, and call upon the power of Izunome to heal them both. Alex forgoed fending off the winds and dove down and forward, punching through the underside of the building to cause it to collapse.

The sisters flipped out of there and Alex landed twenty feet away, attacking them wildly with flaming slashes as he slowly closed the distance. Yorihime drew on Kagutsuchi's power to turn the flames to nothing, then Lord Gion's power to dig into Alex's legs with the field of blades.

His red shield came to his aid, the last of this set. Alex shattered the blades by waving his hand out to release a burst of power, then sped straight for the sisters. They hopped aside to evade his air quaking punch, but he spun left and immediately threw another punch towards Toyohime.

His fist was inches from her chest when she swung her right arm up and released another rope hidden up her sleeve. She grabbed onto Alex's wrist and held them together with her rope, and this time there wasn't a shield to save him. Yorihime called the incantation for Lord Sarutahiko, this time focusing his power into her sister.

As Toyohime's arms and legs glowed with raw power, she leapt hundreds of feet into the air and dragged Alex along with her. She spun around and let go, hurtling him towards the ground faster than a comet's descent. She then swung her fan with zero intention of letting a speck of him land.

Alex reached into his right pocket and stopped time with the Gaia Temporis, using that break to speed up behind Toyohime and then surprise her with a kick to her back as time resumed. Toyohime spun towards the ground and was caught in mid-air by Yorihime, who channeled Lord Sarutahiko's power into herself.

The air enveloped their bodies as they hurtled towards the ground at an incredible velocity. Alex flew at them even faster, wrapping his body in fire. Yorihime swung her sword up and called upon Susano'o's power to simultaneously throw Alex into turmoil with a storm, and summon the god's armor for the aftermath.

Alex reached the edge of the storm and kicked it with all his might, launching it straight for its master. It was cut in half with a one-handed swing of Kusanagi, then brought back down to knock out Alex's sword when he came in to attack. He remained close in spite of the dangers and threw a right hook towards Yorihime's face.

She blocked it with the Yama mirror, exactly as HE planned it. He coated his left fingers in a sharp metal and scraped the area above her arm to slice the mirror off of it and claim it for himself. Yorihime's arm burned hot, and she started to become separated from her sister.

Alex grabbed the shield in both hands and slammed it down upon Yorihime's face, drawing blood from her nose and causing her to cough and choke on the rest. Toyohime fired curving lasers to attack Alex around the shield, pestering him so much that he ultimately just threw it aside and blasted her with a lightning bolt. Her body sizzled with smoke and plummeted faster downward thanks to the electricity dragging her like an anchor.

Yorihime quickly used Raijin's power to redirect the lightning far, far away, but had to drop the armor to do so. Alex grabbed onto her shoulders and forced them outward. The sharp snap of her bones breaking should have warranted a greater yell than it did. Perhaps the speed they fell simply deafened most of it.

"You know which God you need to beat me!" Alex yelled with a wide and excited grin, "If you don't throw away your pride, your entire race will perish!"

"I-Izanagi!" Was Yorihime's bitter response, and Alex simply shook his head even as Yorihime was granted the jeweled spear Amenonuhoko to penetrate him through the gut.

"Wrong choice..." He coldly shook off the bleeding pain and shoved Yorihime away to the ground.

She looked at her surroundings as the largely unfamiliar smell of smoke burned into her nostrils. The once proud and beautiful Lunar Capital was unrecognizable to her now. The pearl white buildings were black from the fire spread amongs them. The Fairies hadn't lost a single unit, and were gallavanting happily through the city like they owned the place which, considering the numerous Lunarian corpses on the streets, they may as well already have.

The Moon Palace was surrounding with the white flames of purification, no doubt Junko's fault, and the higher-ups' safety is left ominously unknown. Hecatia hovered in the exact same spot as before, surrounding in blood and corpses as she currently choked the life out of a weakened Sagume with her golden chains.

Her way of life was disappearing bit by bit. And she felt blameless towards the whole thing. How could she not, when the accursed, arrogant perpetrator hovered above her, all full of himself for "winning" this war. She grit her teeth hard to the point of her whole body trembling, and the anger swelled in her heart until it burst open, filling her hatred of this one, insignificant, human.

She swung her sword up before her body and planted two fingers against its dulled edge. Squeezing her eyes shut, she concentrated incredibly hard on a god beyond gods. A god of whom she never believed she'd have reason to call forth.

"O' sacred mistress of the divine sun, I call upon your power with all my rage! Burn! Scorch! Turn my enemy to ash with your unstoppable flames! And then drench his impure soul in hellfire!" Fire spiraled out from her body as her eyes were emblazoned with a fearsome crimson glow, upon which she stabbed the air and roared with all her might, "Great Goddess, answer my call! For I am your master, Amaterasu-O-Mi-Kami!"

The winds of turmoil drew silent. The flames, the Fairies, they all quieted down and turned towards the center of the Lunar Capital. All light dimmed to darkness, and a tiny ember awakened in the very center of it. A giant priestly robed woman whose beauty could only be described as heavenly descended upon the ember and held it in her hands. After slowly cradling it up to her chest, her heart opened up and filled the ember with love.

And in seconds, the embers grew to be a small but mighty sun, which returned light to the moon and began spreading solar flares across the sky. The goddess' pristine visage remained behind the sun, while Yorihime landed safely atop one of the buildings and sheathed the sword by her side. She was panting heavily during an intense smile, and was content with letting the goddess finish this battle for her.

Alex floated in the sky just a hundred feet away from the sun, watching as it whipped up a dangerous maelstrom of solar heat that was burning up everything surrounding it. He sweated from head-to-toe, not just from this heat, but from his rising excitement. A solar flare lashed against his body, spawning a second green shield to protect him.

"This is a little more like it, but..." He calmly swung his right arm up to call his sword. He grabbed the handle in both hands and twisted his grip around it, "Sorry, its just not enough."

His wings lifted up high and the flames around him grew brighter and brighter until their intensity matched the makeshift sun. The pressure from his power affected the ground, creating an earthqauke that could be felt for miles away from the Capital. Yorihime's footing swiftly grew understeady, and she was overcome by this rising sense of dread...

"I don't **fear** Death! I don't **fear** Lunarians!" Alex's grin stretched to the absolute limit as his boast echoed throughout the moon, "AND I DON"T **FEAR** GODS!"

He charged at the mighty sun and pierced through its center while cutting downward. Amaterasu lurched back, a burning hot gash forming across her body. Her power spilled forth into the split open sun, pushing it to bursting point. Yorihime's eyes were frozen in utter shock, and she collapsed onto her knees. Not that she'd be there for long, for the sun popped like an overstuffed balloon, spreading devastating flames across the whole Lunar Capital, and swallowing up even the concept of sound...

 _Next Time: The Last Summoning_


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: The Fall of the Moon**

 _O' melodious moon hung upon the night so young._

 _Does it go without saying, that your song's been sung?_

 _You retained your purity, though your people didn't._

 _Now you suffer as they do. Quite unfair, isn't it?_

All feeling in her body had gone numb for a brief while. The terrifying crackle of flames dangling in the air awoke her dormant ears once again, and her eyes shot wide open with a gasp. She breathed quick and haphazardly until her heart raced no more, upon which she then laid a gentle hand against her chest, and dared to look up into the sky.

Once standing atop a building so high it could be said to reach close to the heavens, now she finds herself on the ground, surrounded by gravelly ashes and stone reeking with the smell of death. There was barely a building standing through the smoke, as far as she could tell, and the only living beings that galloped about were those accursed life-bringers, those terrible, **horrible** fairies.

Yorihime shifted her legs to sit atop her knees with barely the energy to stand. Her sword rested on the ground, its delicate, cold steel making her body jump as her ankle tapped it. She watched from afar with eyes as wide as dinner plates as a skyscraper collapsed into a heap of ash that quietly devoured the flames as they spread. The barrier that once kept their city safe from impure eyes was now slowly threatening to suffocate them as it contained the smoke.

This was not her home. It was a graveyard, and one that she'd soon be a part of. Her eyes were nailed to the sight of death surrounding her, and she wondered just why she was still alive to suffer this disgraceful end. 

Then a sharp slapping sound followed a painful blow to the side of her face, upon which she heard a soft, worrying cry beg of her, "Yorihime, please snap out of it!"

Her eyes trembled towards the sight of her older sister, who sat there without a scratch to her name and a smile that stood as a barrier in defiance of this terrible calamity. Yorihime rubbed her eyes with her hands and looked at her again.

Surely she couldn't still be alive? This must be a ghost. A cruel, lingering phantasm of better times. That would have been the only thing keeping Yorihime sane, were her sister not so adept at seeing through her.

"I'm the real deal. There is no one more real than me, dear sister." Her loving concern and lacksy-daisy tone would be impossible for any mirage or spirit to copy. A watery sensation started to trickle down Yorihime's cheeks, and though it was bewildering she focused instead on throwing herself at her sister, and embracing her in a hug.

Her body was wet too, covered in a light sweat that touched even the hands she used to gently rub her back and tell her that everything would be ok. Yorihime pulled back and looked at her sister's eyes, which were slowly starting to shut. She then covered her wavering smile with her fan and giggled.

"Sister, what did you do?"

"After I was blown away by that lightning bolt, I so happened to land on a soft field of grass. Then I saw you summoning Amaterasu from atop the highest tower in the Capital, and instantaneously warped to your aid. Had I been a nanosecond later, I may not have been able to protect us both with a barrier..." Her brows slanted as she murmured disheartingly, "But...it took most of my energy to hold back _her_ might."

"...Your luck has always served you well, sister," Yorihime hung her head with a long, exasperated sigh, "But not well enough this time...I-Its over. Everyone, everything...Its all gone."

As Yorihime's fingers clung tightly to her shoulders, Toyohime bopped her on the head with the tip of her fan and made her wince, "We're still here."

She closed her eyelids, which quivered as they held off the tears like floodgates, and remarked in a melancholic tone, "We have to move on...For all the others who perished here today. We can go to Master Eirin, and live out the remainder of our days at her side."

"We failed her...How could she ever forgive us?" Yorihime said in a despondent tone.

"We tried our best. But if nothing else, it appears the Butcher perished in the explosion." Toyohime's uplifting anecdote was never meant to last. When the wind coldly whisked past them from the north, parting the sea of ash and flames, Toyohime knew her luck had finally failed her.

There stood Alex, his wings painted a shade of black thanks to the hostile, ash covered atmosphere. He edged closer and closer, carefully stepping over the bones that littered his path. He was a hunter on the prowl, his eyes retaining this gruesome reddish tint similar to a demon's.

Yorihime shivered and clung closer to Toyohime, who leaned towards Alex and held her ground without a hint of wavering. He stopped five feet away and slowly raised his right hand, which was already on fire, burning louder than the embers of their dying world.

Toyohime put most of her body between him and her sister, staring at him with eyes so cold they could withstand even his boiling flames. He held his arm aloft, and was averse to showing any emotion towards them. The flames in his hand never grew bigger, or stronger. He kept looking at these two, and the more he did the more he struggled to see them as Lunarians.

" _They're frightened...like humans..."_ His eyes raised a bit, then dropped down all the way as he took in a deep breath and sighed. When he opened them again, he didn't see Toyohime. He saw _**her**_ staring at him and shaking her head.

"..."

Alex lowered his hand and put out the flames, then turned around and began walking away. After a few moments, he dug his feet into the ashes and spoke, "Leave this place forever. Exile yourselves to Earth and live out the rest of your days however you want as humans. Do not hurt anyone. Do not judge anyone...And you'll never see me again."

He took one more step forward, and Toyohime spoke back, "No."

"...Huh?" He peered over his left shoulder and was flabbergasted by the woman standing on her own two legs and pointing her fan at him, itching to continue an unnecessary fight.

Her left leg stumbled back as she kept her weapon of mass destruction aimed forward. She could barely keep one eye open, yet somehow made that weakness look courageous. Yorihime collapsed onto her hands and knees and stared up with her mouth hung in a dumbstruck fashion.

Alex turned all the way around, slowly blinking with a stoic expression as he told Toyohime, "I'm giving you a chance to leave this all behind."

He hung his shoulders and shook his head as he groaned, "Don't be a fool and waste it."

Toyohime grinned wide and unfurled her fan, grabbing onto the elbow that held it up while remarking, " **I** can't in good conscience let you go."

"Conscience? You chose a pretty stupid time to grow one of those, don't you think?" Alex dryly remarked as he slowly began to lose the patience to care.

"Perhaps," Toyohime said while softly nodding her head, "But I don't care. I would rather die to avenge my people...Than suffer a mortal life of indignity, knowing I could have tried."

Alex's fingers curled up next to his hips and he raised his head, facing her with a dull glare, "You Lunarians and your pride..."

Toyohime took a couple steps forward and raised her fan up high. Alex stood motionless, feeling that she would put everything she got into one final swing. Her arm remained still in the air, her body a beautiful statue amidst this dying land. One last time, she glanced over her shoulder, and shone her smile so bright upon her distraught little sister.

"Farewell, Yorihime..." She whispered.

Yorihime raised her head up high and screamed at the top of her lungs, "TOYOHIIIMEEE!"

Her yell was silenced by the descent of her sister's fan. The moment she swung down, an invisible hurricane purified everything standing between her and the barrier...Except Alex. His second blue shield kept him safe as he lunged straight through the turmoil and drew his sword against his right hand.

He thrust his palm against the handle, and stabbed Toyohime clean through the chest. Her arms and legs immediately limped as he suspended her a couple inches off the ground. Blood dripped from both chest and mouth, dirtying her pristine skin. With her dying breath, Toyohime leaned into Alex's ear and whispered, "My sister...had nothing to do with this..."

"...I know." Alex respectfully ripped the blade right out of her chest so she'd suffer no longer, and her body collapse flat against the floor, joining her fellow Lunarians in an untimely, welcoming demise.

Yorihime gawked at that unsightly corpse for a few seconds, then buried her face flat against the ash and pounded the ground with her coiled fists, sobbing all the while. Alex looked down at her and felt his heart come to a near stop. Yet, though he felt sympathy, he had to deliver a harsh truth upon this once proud Lunarian.

"...You could have stopped this," He whispered while lowering his head, "You knew which god you needed to channel to beat me...And you didn't. Cause you were stubborn, you were prideful. You refused to push yourself, and this wasteland is the result of that."

"...I also once failed to save someone because I decided to hold back. I watched someone very precious to me die before my very eyes, because I was weak...And afraid. Afraid that I'd lose myself to this power. But instead, I lost myself to my anger..." Alex looked down at Yorihime and only managed an "And-" before she growled at him with an intense fury, "Shut. UP."

She cupped the ashes into her fists until it was spilling out between her fingers, then raised her head until her voice could be heard clearly, "You don't feel ANY remorse, do you?! You slaughtered my people like animals with a smile on your face!"

Alex closed his eyes and grumbled, "You'd turn a blind eye if your people did the same thing to other races."

"And that makes you _**right**_?!" Yorihime swung her head up. Her eyes were wide and enflared.

"...Your sister threw her life away for the sake of her pride. Don't make the same mistake she did." Alex advised.

"To hell with pride! This fight's no longer about that..." Yorihime reached for her sword and dragged it off the ground as she started to stand. Her staggering stance hardened at the legs as she grabbed her sword in both hands and steadied it before the waist.

"I fought my whole life to protect our way of life from impurity...But now, its all gone. **You** burned it all away!" Yorihime planted two fingers firmly against the edge of her blade and closed her eyes, "So forget pride! Forget honor! This blade of mine shall be wielded in the name of **vengeance**! My sister, my people...I will avenge every last one of them!"

"Almighty Dread Star of Heaven, I invoke your name. Your rage. Your darkness! Give me the power, the strength, to remove this Butcher's existence from this world!" A maelstrom of putrid black erupted around Yorihime's body, distilling the flames and ash from the immediate vicinity until only the blank surface of the moon rested around her feet for a couple hundred feet. Her eyes thrust wide open, glistening yellow like the core of the sun, and her rage bellowing as strongly from her mouth, "AMATSU-MIKABOSHI!"

Alex's body sweated while he grinned from ear-to-ear. With a careless embrace of the darkness surrounding him, he set his body ablaze to meet Yorihime's renewed determination.

An unheavenly growl tempered the darkness, embracing her body with a pair of dimly lit skeletal arms from beyond the void. And upon that moment the whirlwind of malice collapsed into her body, creating a second layer of skin as black as a starless night sky.

Alex swung his right arm down and drew his sword, then held up and waved his left fingers at himself while saying, "Bring it."

"Ok..." Yorihime tightly wrapped her fingers around her blade's handle and leapt straight for her enemy, "Let's dance!"

 **THE LAST LUNARIAN:** _ **WATATSUKI NO YORIHIME**_

Their blades collided in mid-air, releasing a number of sparks that'd make those coming off a god's forging hammer look pathetic. Black winds screamed past Alex's ears, forcing two of his shields off and making him grin. Yorihime dropped to the ground and struck fast with a flurry of broad cuts. Alex blocked each and every one, matching vertical with horizontal, horizontal with vertical, etc.

After fending off twenty or so of these strikes, he spun around and raised his blade up high. Yorihime cut towards his back, which he narrowly evaded by leaning backward in an uncomfortable manner.

He then swung his sword down like a club, and she blocked it with her blade in the nick of time. Fire spurted from his blade into her eyes, forcing them shut. She tugged her blade back and cut through another shield, then found its tip poking into Alex's stomach.

Before he could blink the rest of the blade was forced through his back to send him flying off his feet. Yorihime picked up her legs and sprinted like a bullet. Alex rammed through the shambles of two buildings before she caught up and punched her sword's handle to pin him down.

Alex felt his inside getting roughed up like they'd been exposed to sandpaper. Though after focusing for a bit, he was able to pop the blade right out. Yorihime snatched and tried to force it back in, only for Alex to glide right back up onto his feet.

Alex swung his sword straight up to clash with Yorihime's and sever the closeness between them. She lashed her blade out as quick as a whip to send more black wind howling his way. Alex stood still as they blew off his remaining shields. This sense of vulnerability...It just felt right.

Alex grinned and charged straight ahead, ramming his blade's tip into her blunt edge. She reinforced it with both her hands until the two stopped completely. Alex then tried to pry her blade free by putting his underneath it and tugging up as hard as he could.

Yorihime leaned back so when she moved her blade, his would fly right past her face. She then reversed his maneuver on him, aiming right for below his fingers. Biting his teeth, Alex punched his other hand up and knocked both blades skyward.

The two looked each other in the eyes and, for a brief moment, their minds were in perfect sync. They threw their right fists past each other and struck their faces, blowing them both right off their feet. After stumbling a couple steps back they dug their feet three inches into the ground and threw themselves at each other with growling scowls.

He rammed his right knuckles into her left, then enveloped his left fingers between her right ones. They pulled in close and rammed their foreheads together, their dirtied blood trickling thick down their noses. After being locked in furious combat for god knows how long, the glint of their falling blades forced their attention away.

They snatched their blades up and back away as they swing. Yorihime's may have been faster, but Alex's was **stronger**. Upon forcing her to stagger Alex was able to quickly cut her across the gut, coldly holding his blade up beside his shoulder.

Yorihime coughed blood yet never lost her fire. She attacked, attacked, and attacked some more. Her arms sped like lightning, her blade ringing like thunder. Even with this unholy matrimony with darkness, she didn't lose that spark, that peerless swordsmanship that had defined her life from the start.

Alex found himself purely on the defensive, his feet dragged through the ashen lands. Though he couldn't fight off this relentless assault, not yet anyways, he had to feel a degree of respect for his foe for forcing him back this much. Had she chosen to fight this way from the start, he knew deep, deep down in his heart that things would have gone differently.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then swung once with all his might as the opening revealed itself. Yorihime's body trembled as it fell back a bit, her arm swung up high into the air. Alex slowly opened his eyes, and the way he quietly stared at her re-ignited her spirit to attack again.

She swung and he blocked, so she then stabbed him in the thigh. She swung again so he blocked again, and then she stabbed his waist. One more swing, one more block, and she went straight for his heart. He grabbed the blade in his hand and squeezed it in place. Even as he bled profusely, he didn't let go.

"Too little, too late..." Alex whispered before a sharp metallic ping rang through Yorihime's ears, echoing from her now broken blade, which he cut through like rice paper.

Her sword now reflective of her hope, Yorihime's arms fall to her sides and she begins to cry. Alex brings his left arm around to her back and pulls her in closer with no resistance. As she cried into his shirt, he stared as far away from her as physically possible.

She punched him, but her fists might as well have been pebbles. He closed his eyes and smelled the fire, the blood, the ashes...Killing the Lunarians was the right call, that's what a hero would've done.

" _...But only a monster would separate a girl from her loving older sister..."_ Alex sighed, and said with a heavy heart, "I hope that someday, you and your sister will be reincarnated. And that the people you become will live and love life to the fullest."

After a heartfelt soliloquy, he thrust his sword into Yorihime's chest and opened his eyes, which were cold and motionless. Then he whispered softly into her ear, "You may have tried your best...But in the end, you were always only going to be my Stage 1 boss..."

He ripped the blade free to let her endure the pain no longer. Upon stepping aside she collapsed to the ground, and as lucky would have it she wound next to the corpse of her sister. Perhaps, one last time, Toyohime's good luck favored her...

"..." Alex closed his eyes and put away his sword and wings, and stood alone amidst the ruins of the Lunar Capital.

'Alone' in relative terms, anyways. The Fairies still flocked the skies doing whatever they please. They may as well. This land is now there's to inherit.

"...Except..." Alex hadn't forgotten. There was something, someone, he was curious to check on. Now that the battle for the moon was over, he was free to take his time looking for them. Though perhaps, if his suspicions were correct, it might already have been too late for one of the two.

The Moon Palace was due east, and thus east he walked, alone. He kept walking over ash and bone without ever looking down, and closed his ears to the sound of embers. After five minutes of walking, he found Hecatia sitting criss-cross atop a small hill of skeletons. Sagume's single, featherless wing stuck out from the top. The Goddess hadn't a scar to her name, and was whistling cheerfully by her lonesome.

At least, until Alex entered the picture. Then she winked at him and tilted her head back with a smile, "That was pretty fun! Like, it got really _explosive_ near the end there, but nothing like a little fireworks to top off a party am I right?"

Alex hung his head away from her and looked around. Hecatia pouted at him and mumbled, "I totally thought you'd be more into this. What's gotten under your skin?"

"...None of your business Hecatia," He was dismissive in a somewhat respectful manner as to not earn the goddess' ire, "Are you sure we got all the Lunarians?"

"A few of the bunnies might've turned tail and run, but I didn't feel like hunting them down. I mean like, what'd they even do to deserve genocide, right?" Alex barely mustered a nod at that.

Hecatia levitated and leaned back while dangling her planetary accessories beside her face. Gently folding her arms in place, she piqued Alex's interest with a few words, "You're worried about _her_ , aren't you?"

Hecatia laid flat on her back, closed her eyes, and waved a couple fingers around in front of her, "She's over there. But be careful. She's kinda feeling... _off_."

Alex walked over to the left and bit and pushed through the smoke that remained of the Moon Palace. He eventually heard some sniffling and picked up the pace a bit. He saw a curtain of golden hair draping a crying woman who sat blissfully in a pool of blood an inch thick and twenty feet wide. There were guts strewn amongs the blood like pieces of meat in some ghastly soup...But they weren't a human's.

Nay, these organs could only have belonged to a toad. The toad that was once known as Chang'e. Getting into the specifics of why she was like this would take far too much time. But confirming her death left Alex with a lot of questions. From what he understood, Chang'e was yet another victim of the Hourai Elixir. By all rights, she should've have been perfectly immortal.

Was Junko's power able to purify the elixir from her body? Did so many Fairies being around negate its power? Or maybe, just maybe, Eirin's elixir was only able to ward off death for stuff that she had knowledge of...

" _...Storing that in the back of my head for later..."_ Alex murmured grimly in his mind before steadily approaching and reaching out towards the vengeful spirit.

"Junko?" He felt...warmth, coming from her body as his fingertips got inches away from nestling her hair. She suddenly flinched and it scared him back.

"...Is someone there?" She inquired. Her voice, to his surprise, was brimming with relief, joy and sadness all at once.

She twirled her head back while slowly raising the rest of her body in a similar manner. Her arms were covered in dry and cracked blood up to the elbows, and fresh blood had been splattered all over her face. The waterfall of tears from her eyes cleaned it off, leaving her with this bright and hopeful smile.

She had just committed murder on a foe most foul to her...Yet nothing about her appearance was unnerving. In fact, Alex would go as far as to say she looked positively radiant. Her cheeks were red on their own, and her eyes bright like pearls.

"I did it..." She gasped in utter disbelief. Closing her eyes, she whispered merrily, "I killed Chang'e..."

"...I see." Was all Alex could say before Junko swept his hands up and pressed them up to her chest. Her heart was beating, steadily.

Junko's smile rose with her heartbeat. Alex blinked once...and her body was gone. Only her clothes remained, and they were carried away by a breeze that whispered one thing into his ears.

" _Thank you..."_

He closed his eyes, tucked his hands into his pockets, and his skin started feeling cold.

"Her grudge was satisfied. But...she was a being of pure grudge, so she had to leave."

Hecatia floated sideways a few feet behind Alex with her eyes closed and a small frown, "...But wherever she'll go next, she'll be happy. Right?"

"Getting revenge made her happy. She died wearing one of the prettiest smiles I had ever seen..." Alex looked down at his right palm. Bits of blood had been wiped onto it that he wrapped up in his fist and raised up next to his chest, "She didn't die a monster...She died as herself."

"Kinda makes you think, doesn't it?" Hecatia interjected.

"...I wonder if a smile is waiting for me at the end of the road." Alex whispered.

"Who knows? Certainly not me."

Alex raised his head and pulled the Gaia Temporis from his right pocket, immediately creating and walking towards a rift in time-space.

Hecatia poked her eyes open and commented, "So, the Fairies are stuck here then, I'm assuming?"

He stopped and hung his shoulders a bit. She then said with a little more crass in her tone, "Of course, that's totally according to plan, isn't it?"

"..." Alex remained silent. Not that that'd stop her.

She wagged a finger up beside her elbow and remarked, "You're right, you're right. None of my business."

"...You've been a great help today Hecatia. I couldn't have done this without you rallying the Fairies..." Alex leaned back and gestured towards the playful swarm, "But I just...need them out of the way for a bit. When I'm done, I'll let them come back to Gensokyo safe and sound."

"Assuming there's a Gensokyo left." Hecatia didn't soften the blow. She struck hard like a bat to the back of his head, and it made his body squirm.

"...It won't get to that point. I won't allow it. Yukari's my only target. Once I've dealt with her, I'll never come back."

"She knows you're coming. Just saying."

"Good. Then she won't run or hide. I know it."

"Though I doubt she's got to worry about a rough-'n-tough Overlord coming at her all alone."

Having heard her draw her battleline squarely at "Neutral", Alex closed his eyes and silently stepped forth into the rift where it closed up the instant afterwards. Hecatia opened her eyes and stared up at the Earth.

"Hmmm, you like, totally put me in a tough position here Yukari Yakumo." She leaned back into a slow descent towards the moon's surface.

"I could've said something, but like...Would it have made a difference? I guess like, none of this really matters to **me** specifically, does it? But to him..." Gently laying upon the moon like it was a grassy knoll, Hecatia closed her eyes and started to feel sleepy, "Hmmm...Guess I'll just have to hope everything works out. A pity it had to go this way..."

 _Next Time: Renouncing the Law_


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: The Fall of Judgment**

It is nighttime in Gensokyo. And a quiet one at that. All things considered, it has been very peaceful recently. No incidents, minor or major, have occurred. The denizens of Gensokyo have been allowed to enjoy the scenic view of the night sky, whose ebony blanket is glistening with the light of the full moon and the many stars that surround it. Its so bright, the humans are having a hard time sleeping.

But in spite of this initial outlook of the land, something was wrong. The nocturnal Youkai of the forest were cowering in the shadows, keeping their heads to the ground and their eyes wide towards the sky. The moon was slowly turning a fiery shade of red, and it felt like it could fall at any moment.

Word of unrest quickly spread to the mountaintops, the sky, the lake, and even the underground. The voice of unease repeated the same general thing, "Something's coming...But what?"

They would do well to cherish the peaceful days they've been gifted. This will be a long, _long_ night...

Over at the Garden of the Sun, a quiet wind stirs. It passes through the grass in a perfectly straight line, and lasts but an instant. It pushes aside the thick sunflower stalks like they were as weak as straws, and leaves ovular footprings in the dirt.

Yuuka, the only Youkai brave enough to remain in this cornucopia of beauty, sensed the wind's approach and swung her umbrella towards it. But it was already gone. She wouldn't forget it though. Not when it had carried such an intense presence. A couple seconds later, the wind left her garden completely...

It had passed on to the other side through the garden's invisible barrier. The curious flowery plains of the Sanzu River was the next thing it would pass on through on the way to its unknown, final destination. It edged closer and closer to the river, stalling itself when the Shinigami Komachi was found napping against a rock at the river's edge. She stretched her arms up high and let out a yawn so great it'd make a dragon tired too.

"That sure was a lot of souls...What the heck happened up there?" Unlike most times, her weariness was genuine. Her eyes could barely maintain focus, and her heart beat as soft as a kitten's.

"Haaaaaaaah...Oh well...That's Shiki's problem now..." When it seemed she'd completely succumbed to hibernational urges, the wind moved forward. When it caressed the edge of the river bank, it made a gentle splashing sound...

" _SCHWING!"_

And then Komachi had her scythe pointed right where the wind had gone to. She blinked twice and reeled it back in upon noticing a lack of blood. She murmured rather puzzledly, "I could've sworn I..."

Her mouth forced out another yawn and after smacking her lips she sunk back down into a state of relaxation and bemoaned, "Forget it...Naptime!"

She slept, and unknowingly because of that, allowed the wind to cross the Sanzu River with ease. Length wise, it was a ten-mile trip without Komachi's powers affecting it. For the wind, this only meant a second long journey before it had arrived, at last, to the Ministry of Right and Wrong.

And then the wind ended its march and vanished, with Alex Whiter suddenly appearing where it stopped. He pulls his hand out of his right pocket and gives it a couple pats. Then he looked up, and took in a deep breath.

"Haaaa..." His heartbeat was regular, so he walked forward and never glanced back. It didn't take long before he discovered that the Ministry's gates were rather...occupied.

There were thousands of these white, wispy clogging the way through. These must be souls, Alex determined, but didn't want to acknowledge _whose_ they were as he pushed forward through the clot. The gate opened for one soul at a time, and never again would they return.

As he slowly waded through the crowd of malleable souls, he was pestered by their emotional states. Rage, confusion, sadness, but mostly rage, passed through his body like fine strands of hot metal. If they could speak, they'd yell at him to die, a fate he'd most certainly welcome...But instead, this "roast" of their simply came off as a pitiful last attempt at life.

Once he arrived at the gates, he waited for them to open for a soul, then bolted on through and mentally slammed them shut. The loud "Bang!" would serve as his greeting for the person waiting for him down the long, quiet hall.

He tucked his hands into his pockets and strolled on through. The distance was just a little shorter than he remembered it being last time. The podium of judgment started off as a speck in his eyes, but eventually grew to cover his entire range of vision. Stopping at that point, ten feet away from the podium's base, he slowly creaked his head back and listened as Shikieiki muttered, "Next..."

But upon looking over to see her next visitor, her voice grew heavily disgruntled, matching the raggedness under her eyes, "...You again."

Though highly dismissive of his presence, she tried to maintain her professionalism and leaned back, closed her eyes, and inquired in a more softer voice, "What do you want?"

"I'm back to continue our discussion from before." He responded right away.

Shikieiki patiently used the bottom of her rod of remorse like a gavel before stating in a firm voice, "I have already deliberated that matter with you. You responded by throwing a fireball in my face."

Alex closed his eyes and pinched the temples of his forehead as he grumbled, "I didn't have a choice. It was either that or fail Shina..."

"I'm not hearing an apology..."

Alex's forehead veins twitched as he felt a headache coming on. Thus he wound up forcing from his mouth a rather trite apology, "Fine. Fine...Things got a little heated on my end, and it shouldn't have. Ok?"

Shikieiki opened her eyes, halfway between amused and unamused, and gently laid her rod down, "Even if I held a grudge, I'd be too preoccupied to follow through on it."

"Now, please leave, I have work to do." Her request was made respectfully, but Alex was not to budge an inch.

"I. _Said_...We're continuing our discussion," He asserted through lightly gritted teeth, "I didn't just wade through thousands of dead Lunarians for nothing!"

Shikieiki hastily took notice and squinted at him, "How...do you know...?"

"Look at me again with the mirror," Alex bluntly imposed his demands upon her, "I have proof now."

Then he caught himself from getting angrier by taking in a very deep breath and letting out a sigh, "And once this is over with, I'll take my leave of this place. Forever."

The bags were starting to show under Shikieiki's eyes, thus motivating her to just acquiesce to his request and get it over with. She performed the summoning ritual for her mirror and held it up so Alex's reflection would fill its surface. The mirror turned black like before, but this time with the added bonus of Shikieiki widening her eyes and letting out a hoarse gasp, almost out of hestiation...

Alex's heartbeat raced and he madly grinned. Every word that the judge now spoke would be music to his ears.

"...You were telling the truth."

He gently nodded his head with an affirmative hum. Shikieiki leaned back and rubbed her forehead, which felt like it was on fire, "Yukari Yakumo **is** guilty of harming other worlds..."

He nodded faster and hummed louder to the point of rubbing it in. Shikieiki took some time to herself to regain focus. She paced her breaths slowly and sat perfectly upright, then cupped and laid her hands onto the podium.

"I am no stranger to being wrong...But it is an odd feeling to know that I have judged someone incorrectly." Alex was starting to sweat from being so eager, and Shikieiki hadn't even finished yet.

"When the time comes for her to be judged...I will know exactly where to send her. In the deepest, deepest level of Hell, where she will suffer even past the universe's end." That, was her final word on the matter.

"YES!" Alex swung his fists up triumphantly. But then the meaning of her words set in, and like a serenade being tainted by the singer deciding to go falsetto at the final chorus, his enthusiasm deflated. He was left staring up at her in abject confusion, "'When'? What do you mean...'When'?"

"There is still an order that must be followed. When she dies, she will be judged. Just wait. Her time will come." Shikieiki assuredly smiled at that. Sure, she may be good at judging others' sentences, but she was far, far from perfect when it came to judging the mood.

Alex murmured under his breath in a somewhat unhinged manner "Wait..." and slowly brought one hand down to the side of his face, grabbing onto it while snickering like a hyena and closing his eyes, "Wait...she says..."

His grip squeezed tighter, causing his pinky to slip down and force his eyelid open. His glare was that of fury...and scorn. Casting any semblance of patience and respect aside, he bluntly called out to the judge, "You _WILL_...put her away for good. **Now**."

Shikieiki leaned out and met his stare with an impatient frown, "I have granted your request. Now leave."

The gates started to creak open, only to be slammed back shut with a thought. Alex pulled his hands down and crunched them into fists, "I came back to Gensokyo to deliver justice to the wicked..."

He squeezed his fists until they were turning red, his attitude unamused, "I never thought _**you'd**_ be one of them...Shikieiki Yamaxanadu."

"What on Earth are you-"

"Every life! Every bit of suffering! Everything Yukari has or WILL get away with from now on will be on YOUR head!" Alex raised his voice with a gravelliness in his throat. As fire raised around his body, his voice got even louder, "So what if they'll be punished in death?! As long as people like her live they'll keep killing! And hurting! Without a goddamn shred of remorse! The moment they take an innocent life on purpose, that's it! They've forfeited theirs! No exceptions!"

Shikieiki pounded her gavel twice and exclaimed, "The law doesn't work that way! There are rules and regulations that must be adhered to, lest humanity become no worse than animals! As the Elemental Overlord, it is your duty-"

"My duty is to **stop** evil in its tracks! If the law won't help, then the law must **change**!" As Alex spoke to her firmly with narrowed eyes, Shikieiki began to feel a chill crawl down her spine.

"Instead of reacting to threats, people like us need to be proactive in stopping them! Think of how many countless future lives have been spared because I helped end the Lunarians reign of terror?!"

"...So, it was you..." Shikieiki muttered in dull surprise.

Alex closed his eyes and quietly remarked with a hint of satisfaction, "Yes. It was me."

Shikieiki scoffed, "Then your 'justice'...Is nothing more than an excuse to commit murder."

"...I. Never. Said. You'd have to **kill** Yukari," Alex was starting to get annoyed, "Just lock her away. Throw away the key. Think of it as...eternal jail time. Then you'll have no blood on your hands, if that's what you're so goddamn afraid of!"

"...No. My position is unchanged." Shikieiki said with her head held high.

Alex squeezed his fists until they were taut and trembling, then let his fingers spread loosely and quietly drew his sword into his right hand. Sincerely, he stated, "I'm sorry you feel that way Shikieiki."

As she unamusingly looked on, Alex shook his head and sighed, "I figured this would be the hardest road to go down to stop Yukari...But I honestly thought that you'd do the right thing, regardless of your job."

"If you go through with this, then I **will** do the right thing by stopping you. Do you not understand that you will be condemned to her same fate?" Her final warning was issued with a hollow look in her eyes.

"...Ha...Haha. I learned I shouldn't even have existed only a month ago. So your 'Hell'?" Alex shrugged his shoulders, and his voice cracked with a squeak, "Sure as HELL doesn't scare **ME**!"

He pulls down on the all seven triggers with vigorous resolve. The golden flames from his transformation flood the vast, empty hall, and Shikieiki stands against its onslaught with her body unmoving like a statue. Once the boy had donned his Phoenix wings and fiery aura, she jabbed her rod of remorse upon him hard enough to project air.

"I fear for the safety of Gensokyo, nay, the universe, if you are allowed to roam free..." She positions the rod at the center of her chin and her tassels around her hat began to raise as a sublimely powerful glow surrounds her body, "It is with the full authority granted to me as the Yamaxanadu of Gensokyo that I shall subdue and cast you eternally into Hell!"

"You damn hypocrite!" Alex attacked fast with a fireball greater than the size of her podium. Shikieiki closed her eyes and called her mirror forth, making it grow in size to swallow the fireball whole and spit it right back out twice as fast.

Alex cut it down with one arm and narrowly squinted at her sturdious stance as she then used her mirror upon him. In the vein of her Spell Card from long ago, she perfectly copied his image not once, but twice, and set them upon him with a blunt thrust of the arm.

His copies could match him in speed, and were in his face before he even blinked. But as they brought their fists down upon his skull, he closed his eyes and held his ground. Much to his surprise however, their punches hit their mark and forced his chin down onto his chest, and the ground to break apart until the cracks reached the walls.

"Ghhhckk...!" The copies were so perfectly alike that his soul shields could not tell the difference. Alex forced their fists up with his head and growled, "...Fine then..."

He then grabbed onto their wrists and slammed them together before his body with a thunderous crack resounding from the splitting of their bones. He then hopped above them and smashed his clasped together fists into their skulls to down them.

They vanished a second later, but Shikieiki was already summoning more without missing a beat. Alex wiggled his left fingers behind his back whilst slashing his sword twice to send waves of fire her way. While her mirror wasted time absorbing and reflecting them back, vines formed and crawled up the sides of her podium. Like snakes they slithered along, waiting for their chance to pounce her arms.

Yet as their heads raised for the decisive strike, they were pinned down via the tips of multiple Rods of Remorse, Shikieiki not even batting an eye to their help. Alex scoffed and realized, _"She must have an infinite supply of those damn things..."_

Two more copies came barreling forward to attack Alex. One clone drew a blade and swiped at his chest, the other leapt over him and attempted to dive down to impale him through it. Alex slashed upward with all his might to rip the second's clone hand off, then lauded the judge for her folly, "These cheap mockeries may have my power...But they'll never have my spirit!"

He pulled back and then thrust his whole body forward in a single burst of speed, ramming the two clones together and throwing them into the podium. He then thrust his right hand up and impaled them through the chest with a steel javelin extending out of his palm.

The one in the front tried to pull free, and received a second javelin to the brain for good measure. After they vanished, Alex quickly attacked Shikieiki with a flurry of fireballs. Her mirror absorbed each and every one with ease. Though it was hardly Alex's plan to succeed anyways.

He clapped his hands together to summon a thundercloud above the judge, which deposited its ten million volt payload in a sky quaking thunderbolt. The mirror rushed above her faster than the bolt's descent and could handle even THAT overwhelming power without a single crack to its frame.

Shikieiki brought the mirror to her chest and laid her arms around its circular frame, peering down at the scoffing Alex with a judgmental glare, "The Yamaxanadu's judgment is _absolute._ Even the Elemental Overlord cannot hope to overturn it."

She threw out the lightning bolt first and waited for Alex to flee before sending the fireballs out in a blinding fast swarm. The hall was too constrained for him to maneuver around in quickly, so he just let the fireballs hit him and channeled his strength into something a little more subtle attack.

Up along the sides of the podium, a chilling sheet of ice began its advance. Shikieiki winced a little and her eyes shifted to the left and right, an act that went beneath Alex's notice as she summoned _three_ copies to attack him this time.

One copy dove straight at Alex and slashed rapidly at his body. He deflected the attacks with his own sword, but didn't lose focus on the other two copies speeding past his sides. They grinded to a halt five feet behind him and swung their respective swords at his back with all their might.

He thrust his wings up and hardened them with a metallic amber similar to his blade's composition. The weight of his wings took a slight toll on his strength, and allowed the first clone the opening to cut up his body some. The brazen scars marring his body were barely thicker than a fingernail, but were pesky all the same.

Alex grabbed his blade in both hands and smashed the edge of the copies' to force him back a couple inches, then swiftly did a one-eighty to bash the two copies back as well. By the time they retaliated in unison, Alex had already shot up to the ceiling and positioned his bright, burning hands towards the ground.

He unleashed a massive pillar of fire that scorched the peerless shine off the floor while turning his copies to ash. But in doing so, he foiled himself by heating up the room and melting the ice that was about to reach Shikieiki. She couldn't help but smirk after that.

" _That podium's helping her predict every move I make on her..."_ Alex knew then and there that he'd have to destroy it. Thus he drew his sword on back and it erupted with flames like a volcano.

Shikieiki stiffly raised her brows and summoned three more copies to her side. They formed a triangle in front of her and held their arms out, creating a multilayered barrier out of fire as Alex swung his sword. The flames unleashed in a whirlwind-like stream and cut a swathe through the wall as they headed on a one-way collision course with the barrier.

The barrier did its part and absorbed most of the flames before they'd come even close to their target. Then, the copies thrust their palms against the barrier and unleashed a white hot triangle across the room. Alex dove to the floor before the attack fired and found himself sweating and muttering "Shit!" at a rapid pace.

Hunched towards the ground, Alex grit his teeth and saw an opening between his soulless shams. He clenched his right fist until his knuckles dug into his skin and rocketed towards the center of the podium. His copies piled onto him, wrapping their arms around his mouth to still his breathing, then using the rest of their bodies to drive him to the ground.

Three against one, especially when those three were himself, meant Alex had no chance in hell of breaking free through brute strength alone. They were draining the oxygen from his lungs bit by bit to knock him out, and he could feel his eyes forcing themselves shut.

"Get...OFF OF ME!" He managed to scream before smashing his fists into the ground and riddling the copies' bodies with metal rods shooting up from the ground.

Once they were gone he stood right back up and hastily breathed in and out. His body was mad with sweat and his face a gentle shade of purple. He scowled at Shikieiki, who showed no emotion, not even remorse, and wound up yelling at her, "So you won't deal with Yukari, but you'll kill me?! Is that how it is?!"

"You will not be imprisoned willingly. Unsavory though it may be, you leave me no other choice but to resort to these methods."

"You bitch..." Alex spat in her face.

"Of course, you could just as easily run, like you did before." Shikieiki made a joke at the expense of the boy's character, and to her surprise, he briefly chuckled at it.

"Ha...! No..." He sternly stared her down, "I am not running away anymore. Yukari WILL pay for her crimes!"

Shikieiki silently tapped the Rod of Remorse onto the podium and used her mirror to call two more copies to her aid. They drew their swords and threw them straight at Alex. He hopped back to evade them, and they just started throwing more. They weren't bound to his rules, after all.

Alex hopped around a bit until a wall of stone rose up to stop him completely. Yet instead of being dismayed, Alex grinned and formulated a plan. He hopped UP the wall until he was at the very top, all the while bringing his blade right up against his left hip.

He narrowed his eyes and waited for his copies to throw their blades and, upon that very moment, he leapt straight off the wall and swung right at them. The blades impaled through the copies and punctured the sides of the podium. Shikieiki looked shocked, even more so when the whole thing began to shake.

Alex had fired a wave of pure power, invisible to the naked eye, that cut right through the spots the mock blades had breached. The puncture spots, combined with this cut, made the whole podium uneven. The weight shifted primarily to the right, and it wouldn't be long before the whole thing'd come crumbling down.

Shikieiki grabbed her Rod of Remorse and levitated away from the muddled site. Her eyes narrowed and a series of rods began to hover in a ring formed around the waist. She put one hand behind her back, and the other held the original Rod of Remorse before her chin.

Staring at Alex as he lingered ten feet in the air before her, she brandished the Rod of Remorse like a dueling rapier and murmured, "Accepting judgment and repenting for your crimes...That is a good deed you could do on your final day."

"...Are you done lecturing?" Alex stretched his hands out, and immediately the were pinned through the palms by a pair of rods. They forced him against the Yama's mirror, which grew to accommodate his size, and were able to keep him there regardless of his struggle.

"The rods judge you for your sins. There is no limit to the weight they can dole out to the guilty." Shikieiki was still able to use her mirror to create copies, and two pulled themselves partway free from behind Alex. They raised a blade each and impaled them into his chest, avoiding the vital organs.

Alex spit up blood, while the pain was scorching throughout his nerves. He raised his head and grinned a bloody grin, "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

Shikieiki grimaced and hide her mouth behind her rod, then squinted her eyes and sent out two more rods to pin Alex's legs to the mirror. He continued to smile, almost like the pain made him happy. Tears were rolling down his eyes, and he was content to just giggle like a hyena.

"Hehehe! No wonder no one wants to die...This...This actually hurts quite a lot!" Shikieiki kept a watchful eye on every part of Alex's body, and noticed that the rods around his palms were starting to tremble.

He shifted his head up and steeled his grin into something truly unnerving as he declared, "But I've been hurt **much** worse than this."

He shot the rods out of his hands like they were wooden sticks. Shikieiki flinched as they passed her by, and then with a snap judgment she commanded the copies to burrow their blades in deeper. Alex exploded with fire and snatched their wrists into his vice grip, squeezing until they popped right off their arms. The copies retreated into the mirror, and their blades vanished.

Alex then ripped himself free from the mirror and threw himself at Shikieiki with blood oozing from his limbs, creating a hazy crimson smog in his wake. He lashed his right hand down towards her face, but was stopped by the mirror. He squeezed his fingers into a fist and pressed against the mirror. There were many barriers he could smash, many limits he could break, but the defensive might of the Yama's Mirror was one of the truly invincible forces in this entire universe.

...But that didn't make it _impossible_ to overcome. And Alex had already figured that out, judging by the grin he bore. Shikieiki widened her eyes and started pacing back as Alex stretched his other arm over the top of the mirror, which tried to grow to prevent his advance.

Yet instead of backing down, he used his arm to press **down** on the mirror and stop IT from advancing further. Shikieiki commanded the mirror to produce a dozen copies to swarm and enveloped Alex in the ultimately vain hopes of dragging him away.

Alas, their strength was spread too thin to matter. He could still channel all of his power into a singular, fiery burst to cast them all aside, while still having enough energy to throw a fireball into Shikieiki's face. She reeled back and started shaking her head, the burning pain in her eyes serving as a grim reminder of before.

And while her mind was frizzled, her mirror would be unable to keep Alex at the gates. He charged on over them and dove straight for Shikieiki, grabbing her by the shoulders and bringing her down towards the bottom of the broken podium. He rammed the back of her head into it and her hat flew off as she let out a throaty gasp of pain.

Though her position did indeed grant Shikieiki a lot of power, the real muscle behind this whole afterlife operation was undoubtedly Komachi. The Yamaxanadu herself? When face with Alex's monsterous strength, her body held up as well as the average human's.

That is not to say she died instantly upon hitting the ground. Or that she was even under threat of dying at all. Her head throbbed, and blood was coughed up from her mouth as Alex let go and let her body slump flat onto the ground.

Alex kneeled next to her hips and hunched overhead. He stared her deep in the eyes as she appeared squirmish and even a little frightened, and then stabbed his sword down inches away from her neck. Her skin turned pale, and she pinched her lips together and looked as vulnerable as a child.

"..." Alex's eyes sank, and his racing heartbeat began to lessen its pace. The reflection of him in her eyes looked horrific, especially with the blood plastered across his body.

" _...What the hell am I doing?"_ He closed his eyes and pulled his blade from the ground, then stood upright and swiftly turned his back to Shikieiki.

His Phoenix wings were shed off his back in a cloud of golden ashes as he stepped away, declaring in a cold tone, "You're done here Shikieiki Yamaxanadu. From now on, I shall be the one who judges the wicked in Gensokyo."

Shikieiki bitterly grit her teeth and pulled her head off the ground, stamping her palms back for support as she suddenly raised her voice, "Judge?! You're no judge...You're no _jury_. You're just a dirty, sinful, **executioner**."

Alex leaned his head down and remarked, "Its not a pleasant role, but someone has to step up to persecute the guilty. If you won't do it, I _will_."

"And you honestly believe that this will make you **right**? Or _**happy**_?! I SAW what you truly are... _'Blank'_."

Alex dug his feet into the ground and began to growl. Shikieiki then continued to yell like she was driven mad with rage, "Gensokyo is beautiful! It doesn't deserve having your corruption tainting its land! You're a posion! A tainted soul that crawls amongst the living!"

"Shut up..." He growled.

"You'll never know happiness! No one who knows what you are will EVER love you! You're just a thing, A TOOL!"

" _Shut_ _ **her**_ _up..."_ A subtle voice crawled through Alex's head and joined with her voice to make something in his brain snap. He widened his eyes and spun back with his right hand thrust out while screaming at the top of his lungs, "SHUT UP!"

" _Schrrriiip!"_

Alex was panting, his body fevered at an all-time high. With all the sweat swelling from his pores it took him a moment for him to calm down and see clearly again. And by the time he could, his heart completely stopped a moment after.

"No..." He whispered with his face turning pale.

All he had intended to do was throw a fireball to knock her out. That's all that was needed. But his rage, however brief, robbed him of all his senses. A fireball was indeed thrown, but...It was alongside his sword.

It wound up impaling into the bottom of the podium, but after a few seconds blood was oozing down the sides of it...Coming from the bottom of Shikieiki's decapitated head.

"No no NO!" Alex bit his teeth and hissed a raspy cry of panic as his skin grew cold and pale. He ran straight for her body and ripped the sword free, causing her head to roll off towards the ground. He grabbed and fumbled around with it for a bit, trying to straighten it back on top of her neck.

He positioned it there with his hands providing stable support on its sides. Blood continued to leak out, and both her eyes and face became flushed of color. Alex just stared into her eyes, his own trembling as he hung his head and continued to suspend the head in place until it had been drained of blood.

A rancid smell now filled this once pristine hall and would never leave it...Much like how what he'd just done could never be reversed.

"..." Alex raised his head and his eyes were hollow, devoid of thought or feeling.

"...There's no going back now..." He whispered as he slowly pulled Shikieiki's head up.

A moment later, the gates of the Ministry swung wide open and Komachi came strolling in with her arms tucked behind her head, "Hey Shiki! I heard the commotion from all the way down river! These souls giving you a lot of grief or some-"

She dropped her arms slowly and her scythe plummeted to the ground with a dull ring, "Thing...?"

She rushed straight for Shikieiki's beheaded corpse, using her powers to cover that distance in a nanosecond. She raised her body off the ground and gave it a couple shakes. Ironic, isn't it? That for this Shinigami, master of death, the one thing she feared the most was the death of another.

She cradled Shikieiki's body against her chest and began to cry, which led to her raising her head back and screaming at the top of her lungs, "WHHHYYY?!"

She'd never know the answer to that question, for with the Yamaxanadu's passing, the way to the Sanzu River would be sealed off forever. Alex escaped in the nick of time with the Gaia Temporis' help, keeping Shikieiki's head held under his arm while floating silently through the night...

 _Meanwhile, at the Hakurei Shrine..._

Reimu sits upon her porch, wearing her usual red-and-white garb. She's got her eyes constantly on the moon, which looked very bright red at this point. Its unnatural glow drew her attention like fireflies, but she struggled to keep her eyes open.

"Oi! Reimu!" Luckily for her, her dear friend Marisa was there to keep those creaky eyes open. She rode on down atop her broomstick and hopped down beside Reimu with only a minor bit of stumbling. She then grabbed onto her broomstick and cracked a grin, "Couldn't sleep a wink either eh?"

"...There's an Incident going on, I can just feel it." Reimu said in a rather droll manner.

"Heh, so that's why you're all dressed up rarin' to go! Funny you say that, I was thinkin' the exact same thing! I mean did you see the moon? Its looks like its on fire! Not to mention there's a bunch of Youkai getting all rough and rowdy in the forest."

"Haaaa, don't tell me the vampire's causing a ruckus _again_..." Reimu propped her sagging face with her hands.

"I already went and checked! They're just as in the dark as we are."

"...When the moon burns red with flames..." Reimu began to whisper.

"Eh? Say that again?" Marisa inquired, her curiosity piqued.

"Didn't Yukari say something like that to us before?" Reimu poked her head up to take another look at the moon.

Marisa folded her arms behind her tilted head and said, "Oh yeah...I reckon she did. That was almost two-ish years ago though, right? What about it?"

"...Do you remember the second part?" Reimu's voice turned somewhat grim, but before Marisa could responding, a voice broadcasted itself across all of Gensokyo.

"Attention Gensokyo! I have arrived to deliver an ultimatum to you all."

"What the heck?" Marisa muttered while wandering off the side of the porch. She looked up at the sky and couldn't see anyone for miles.

"Right now you are harboring a monster that has lived in the shadows of your world since before the Hakurei Barrier was erected. She has fed off your fears and sorrows to sustain her appetite, and has manipulated the laws of your world mostly to her advantage."

"But this isn't just about what she's done to your world. This monster has sowed chaos and deceit across countless other worlds, and tormented both me and the person I love most."

"Hey hang on, ain't that voice belong to...?" As Marisa was starting to get the idea of who the voice belonged to, he announced it with a thunderous proclamation.

"My name is Alex Whiter! Some of you know me as the Elemental Overlord, others simply as a guy who passed on by your humble lands but a month ago...But now I am back to finish what I started, and put an end to the monster who has tormented me for so long. You can feign ignorance of who she is, but I doubt there's not a single Youkai in Gensokyo who hasn't at least heard whispers of the named 'Yukari Yakumo'."

"...I didn't come here looking for a fight. That's for all of you to decide. But know this. You are either against Yukari, or you are against **me**. And if you need any proof of what I am capable of..."

Marisa suddenly jumped back as Shikieiki's rotting head crashed and rolled along the ground towards her feet. After assessing and recognizing who she used to be by her distinct green hair, Marisa glanced up at the sky.

Alex floated miles above Gensokyo, nearing the roof of the barrier with his body caressed by the cold winds of night. He silently gazed upon the entire land with his eyes sagging and his arms looking limp as a ragdoll's, and brought an end to his ultimatum...

"Then go to the Hakurei Shrine. I have left them something for you all...You all have one hour to decide whose side you are on, and then I will start visiting your groups, your religions, and your societies one by one to see where you've drawn your line in the sand..."

Then, under his own breath, he whispered a request all to himself, "And I pray that it'll only be Yukari who meets her end tonight..."

 _Next Time: Kill the Unkillable_


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: The Fall of Immortality**

The hour after Alex made his declaration was eerily... _calm_. Various faction leaders gathered their followers and briefly discussed matters with other factions, should it be possible. They didn't want to attract Alex's attention prematurely, fearing for his paranoia.

The eyes were to the sky, for that is where he'd ultimately descend from. It was impossible at this point for the Human Village not to hear of what was happening. The humans all awoke in muddled dismay, and had to be contained to their houses by Keine, Akyuu, and Marisa.

But Alex had no intention of ever visiting the Human Village. They had nothing to do with the conflict. They were ignorant to who or what Yukari Yakumo was. Nay, the first place he'd go visit now that the time alotted has passed was one of the first he'd gone to upon arriving in Gensokyo before.

As the wistful winds blew throughout the lands, Eirin Yagokoro sat by her lonesome on the porch of her Eientei home. She kneeled atop a familiar cushion before a familiar table, where two familiar cups steamed with the herbal scent of fresh tea.

She had only sat there for a couple minutes before the winds blew away in silence. Her lips puckered into a tiny smile as Alex Whiter drifted into the area, taking a seat opposite of hers. He sat in a stable criss-cross position and immediately picked up the cup of tea, and thus Eirin did the same.

The two took a gentle sip, the hot liquid bubbling down their throats and settling within their stomaches. Their satisfied sighs released a lukewarm steam from within, and then they placed the cups back down. Eirin slowly opened her eyes to gaze upon him, yet seemed averse to looking directly at his face.

"Welcome back, Alex Whiter." Her courteous greeting seemed more out of obligation than anything. Thus, Alex did not reciprocate.

He closed his eyes and took another sip of tea, but partway through putting the cup back down he remarked, "You know why I've come here, Eirin Yagokoro."

"Of course," She replied with a grin, "Picking out the smartest person in all of Gensokyo would be considered the most obvious first course of action."

She raised her head just an inch and remarked, "But my brains are nothing without a plan to wrap my head around. So tell me...What **is** your plan of attack against Yukari Yakumo?"

Alex put the cup down and rested his hands upon his knees. He hung and shook his head, biting his teeth into a small but tense scowl.

"Its not going to be easy..." He spoke with an understated amount of stressing on the "easy" part, "I learned through my previous confrontation with her that killing her is a waste of time. She can just pull in other versions of herself as replacements upon death."

"Interesting..." Eirin sounded genuinely surprised, "Then, I'd presume your plan is to have her sealed away?"

Alex expected no less than perfect deductive skills from the Brain of the Moon, but somehow, her swift deduction left him feeling uneasy, "...Yes. There can't be more than one Yukari in a timeline at any given time. She told me as much. I don't give a shit about the Yukaris in the other timeline. As long as the one here's taken out of the picture for good, then that'll be good enough for me."

"...I want to ask you something, if you don't mind." Eirin took a sip of her tea in the time it took Alex to shrug and respond with "Ask away."

" _What_ are you searching for, exactly?" She said with a glare most cold.

"Haven't I made it clear?" Alex responded, shaking off the rather poignant inquiry with a smile and chuckle.

Eirin was having none of that and elaborated the meaning further, even whilst knowing the boy was playing ignorant, "Yes, you've made it abundantly clear that you're after her...But what drives you? Is it justice? Is it bloodlust? ...Or, is it revenge?"

Alex peered away, pursed his lips, and upon not saying anything for a full half-minute Eirin continued, "Then, its a bit of each."

She took another satisfactory sip from her tea and teased him somewhat with her words and smile, "That would explain why your plan is a little too...straightforward, if I may put it so bluntly."

"Explain." Alex put **it** so bluntly himself.

"You want to seal Yukari away. A fair proposition, and one even I had considered myself some time ago. But all you have stated is the end result of your plan, not the steps leading up to it."

"How do you plan on drawing her out of hiding? How do you plan on preventing her from escaping via her gaps? How do you know that someone else won't be able to free her? And how are you expecting other people to cooperate with your plan to begin with?" Eirin planted her cup firmly on the ground, her lithe fingers coiled tightly around it as she stared Alex down and posed to him one final inquiry, "Can you even answer these questions?"

Alex closed his eyes and breathed out a long, heavy sigh, and so Eirin proudly answered for him, "You cannot. Because you do not have a plan. Ideas, certainly, but not a plan."

Alex thrust his eyes open and remarked, "Why the hell do you think I came to you first then?"

"I can think of a number of reasons why. You're desperate. You're not thinking straight. You presumed that I bore that heavy of a grudge against Yukari Yakumo...Shall I go on?"

Alex hung his head a bit and mumbled, "Did Yukari get to you first and blackmail you Eirin? Cause you don't strike me as the kind of person who'd side with her willingly."

"And for once, you'd be right. But..." Eirin forced out a chuckle as she tried to maintain her composure, "The idea that she could hold something over me is laughable at best."

The temperament of the air was changing for the worse. Yet, even knowing this, Alex pursued his line of reasoning, "Then if you aren't on her side, you're on mine. There's no neutrality in this unless you're from the Human Village."

Eirin raised her chin and drank the rest of her tea in a single gulp, looking positively assured in herself as she spoke up, "Let us go back to the fourth question I proposed, about how you expect other people to cooperate with your plan?"

"Surely, you must know that Yukari Yakumo and I have confronted each other not once, but twice. First, in a battle of Danmaku, and then second, in a battle of wits...The latter was more to my liking, as I presumed I held the advantage. But I was wrong. She manipulated me into believing that she was planning an invasion of the moon on her own, using the shrine maiden and the curious vampire as bait to distract my disciples, and even herself as a decoy..."

"Then her friend, the ghastly princess, was able to sneak about the Lunar Capital, undetected thanks to her otherworldly form...And steal a bottle of precious sake right under their noses. And wouldn't you know it...That witch had the nerve to serve that very sake to my face as a 'peace offering', knowing full well that for the first time in my life...I'd be made to experience fear like a human."

"...What does this story have to do with us?" Alex groaned, _"...Not that I don't already know."_

"There are...similarities to you and her," Eirin's words immediately brought Alex's patience to a broil. Even as his nostrils and eyes flared like a rampant bull's, she spoke up without a hint of concern, "The biggest of which is that you both hold a particular grudge against Lunarians."

Alex's head sunk as he shook it in disbelief of what he was hearing, "It has nothing to do with a _grudge_. Your people would willingly commit genocide if a _flake_ of human skin reached their precious capital. They needed to be stopped."

"And to hell with the ones left to mourn their departure...Right?" Eirin's blunt, accosting attitude forced Alex to his feet and have his right hand immediately aimed at her face. Only an ember managed to spark from the palm before took in a deep breath through his nose and squeezed his fingers shut.

His heart was pounding hard against his chest. He raised his head and jerked his hand back to his hip, and barely focused on Eirin telling him, "I may have left them behind, but I still called the Lunar Capital my home...Even if I can see now that they were worse off than I remember them being, myself included."

Eirin closed her eyes and laid her hands flat on her lap, "That's the major difference between you and her...She merely stole their bottle of sake, you stole their lives. She taught me to fear like a human..."

Alex found himself trembling as the Brain of the Moon gently pulled back the curtains of her eyes and glared at him. Her eyes were quiet and reflected little light off the pupils. They were hollow, almost cold, yet the emotions projected off them were hotter than the sun.

"And you...have taught me to feel **anger** like a human..."

Alex's fists trembled until the desire to fight awoke within, causing the fingers to spread apart and fire to erupt from the palms. But they'd only spurt for a second, as some brave fool came barreling down from the sky and drove their right foot into Alex's face.

Their explosive kick, quite literally, twisted Alex's head back twenty degrees before they knocked him off his feet and sent the two of them crashing through the stone fence. Alex dug his heels into the ground and straighened his head back, blowing aside the flames of his assailant with a single gale to reveal them as Mokou.

"You?!" Alex blurted in complete surprise. Mokou scowled angrily and retorted, "Yeah I don't like this either! But you're sure going to like it a hell of a lot less!"

After ramming Alex through half a dozen stalks of bamboo, Mokou destroyed her own right leg in an explosion to slam him into the ground. It regenerated in a matter of seconds, but still made her bite her teeth and let out a hiss.

Alex got right back up with only some soot to his skin to show for Mokou's efforts. He spat a couple embers to the right and flared up his body to deadly extremes, engaging the immortal in a battle of the scowls as he yelled out, "You don't want this fight Eirin! I'm giving you one chance to turn away!"

A series of rather normal lasers bombarded his limbs and jerked them back, disorganizing his stance and nearly forcing him to fall. He didn't even get a chance to react, their movements bordered on the instaneous.

"We cannot die, Phoenix of Destruction," Kaguya murmured playfully as she floated up next to Mokou, the items representing her Five Impossible Tasks hovering in a vertical ring around her body. She raised a sleeve to her lips and chuckled dryly, "Maybe _we_ should be the ones giving you the one chance to leave?"

"Heh, funny you should mention that..." Alex swung his right hand out and drew his sword, immediately reaching for the triggers while his eyes went wide with excitement, "Because I can't die either!"

He squeezed all seven triggers and erupted into golden flames. A black bolt, piercing the air straight through, penetrated the flames and forced Alex out of them already transformed. His eyes widened, his face contorted, and there was now this arrow sticking out of his chest that contorted with a terrible, distorted energy.

Utilizing a bow as tall as herself, Eirin had made the first and most decisive strike in this battle, hurting both his pride and his body. The Anti-Genesis Theorem...Alex wasn't the least bit surprised she used it. But this early? Once he'd shaken off the initial shock, he had to laugh.

"Busting out your trump card this early? And here I thought you were smarter than this..." Alex squeezed the arrow and gave it barely a tug, but it didn't budge. He pulled harder and harder with increasing discomfort, until eventually a nauseating sensation in his stomach began to swell.

The Theorem's malicious hold twisted up his inside and made it uncomfortable to breathe or think. He lurched forward and gasped for air, while the fire around his body shifted from hot to cold in various instances. When Kaguya begun giggling, he looked towards her for answers, only to be plagued by a riddle, "What is a moment that lasts forever?"

She laid a sleeve up by her mouth and giggled, "An eternity. And an eternity shall that arrow remain in your body."

Grievances with the situation aside, Alex was more concerned with growling at her "So what" before thrusting his right hand up out to attack. His brain issued the command for fire, and embers did indeed spurt from his palm...But the next second his whole body suffered a brief convulsion and lightning came out instead.

It still achieved the same result of burning a hole through Kaguya's chest and making her die and revive, but this was a bad omen of things to come.

Eirin walked away from Eientei holding her bow aloft and leaving her body devoid of weakness. The suffering the boy endured was intoxicating to her, "I will make you pay for every single Lunarian you killed...And then I will deal with Yukari just the same, for I sense her hand at play in all this..."

Sweating from rage and illess born of the Theorem, Alex stared at her with vision hazy like fog and a heart racing like a stampede of gazelles. His voice came out weakly at first, "...I don't give a flying fuck about your immortality. Or your arrows. Or your time voodoo!"

With a roar that scraped his throat as it escaped, Alex forced fire loose from his body and yelled, "I! Will! WIN! And Yukari..."

"WILL PAY!" His body erupted like a bomb and sent fire spiraling uncontrollably throughout the forest. Wiltless bamboo turned to ash in seconds, and Mokou rushed to Kaguya's defense, muttering a little under her breath about how unlike her this was.

Though control was lost, Alex was fine with that. _"Let my powers go wild..."_ He thought, _"As long as I part the bees from their queen...Then nothing else matters!"_

He concentrated hard on summoning more lightning, but his body started to stumble around and unleash a flurry of other elements instead. Vines shot out from his mouth, water flooded forth from his fingertips, and his legs were punctured inward by unrefined onyx.

" _Gotta...Get this thing...OUT!"_ Alex fought for control of himself every step of the way. Mokou was too busy defending, Eirin was too busy waiting. If there was a time to strike out, it was now.

Alex took the one second of control he had and seized it in his grasp. He dropped his right hand down into his pocket and tapped the Gaia Temporis. That moment of thought gave it the hint it needed to drop Kaguya's eternity driven voodoo on the arrow, and from there Alex swung his hand up and ripped the arrow free. His whole body then jerked back, and he let out a loud, triumphant gasp of life.

He immediately drew in elemental energy from the forest to heal the wounds he endured and spat away any wild elements that had spawned in or out of his body. He snapped the arrow like a twig between his fingers and snarled at Eirin, who coolly raised her bow with another malicious arrow drawn.

Alex summoned his sword and charged straight for her. Mokou and Kaguya were cut in half along the way only to delay their response for an instant. Alex slashed his sword back and accelerated forth. Eirin took aim and just a moment later he was bearing her down with his body engulfed in fire and his eyes fiery like a dragon's.

But when Alex smashed his fist down, a barrier was there to sever his chances of success down to zero. Eirin cracked a grin and murmured, "Who do you think taught the Watatsukis how to fight?"

Her eyes flared open and she grinned like an excited hunter, reminiscent of how the old Eirin tended to act. She tugged the bowstring back to full length and took aim. Alex recoiled back, gasping similiarly to a yelping dog, and smashed the ground upon landing.

Kaguya and Mokou were then right in front of him before he could blink. The Princess' control over the instaneous let their speed succeed where their strength may fail, and they took advantage of their enemy's confusion to grab onto his arms and force him still.

The first Soul Shield was finally able to assist in protecting Alex, but it was too little too late. Eirin fired her arrow straight and true towards Alex's chest. He squeezed his muscles taut and swung Kaguya and Mokou in the way. It was laughable that he expected that to work, as their bodies were as weak as paper and the arrow ripped right through and punctured him between the liver and heart.

"F-Fuck...!" Alex stumbled back as the convulsions began anew. After the two Hourais revived again Mokou snapped her fingers at Kaguya and told her, "Lets hit him hard and hit him fast princess!"

"After you Mokou." She said with a pleasant smile.

Mokou rose up first and engulfed her body in fire, the visage of it resembling a Phoenix. She then cast the fire from her body onto Alex, revolving it around him faster and faster to whp up a tornado of ever-growing heat and flame. Kaguya held her hand out and focused the power of the instaneous into the tornado, causing the flames to rapidly turn white hot.

Even Mokou had to back up to avoid dying of dehydration until Eirin could get the fire contained with an easily crafted magic barrier. Alex's body was shifting around his ability to either fend off or succumb to the flames every other second. The sweltering, blinding inferno was like Hell on his body whenever he could feel it.

The repetition of losing and replenishing the moisture in his body kept him in a perpetual state of exhaustion. He was struggling to think. Struggling to breath. Were he to lose focus for even a second he would die, simple as that.

The pains he endured drove his body forward. Fighting against the manifestation of Eirin's vengeance with all his strength, Alex dragged his right hand against the tornado's spin and dug his fingertips into the flames. It burned hotter than anything he'd ever produced or seen, but he vowed to make it his to command.

For the brief second he felt in control of himself, Alex tugged his hand back above his head and the flames condensed and tore right through the barrier with ease. Mokou and Kaguya blocked them off with their bodies, though Mokou's attempt resulted in her exploding upon absorbing too much, earning Kaguya's amused laugh upon both their revivals.

Alex was able to perform the same procedure to wrench the arrow free from his body, but was still heavily panting afterwards.

" _I've burned through a lot of energy...I need to get it back...Fast!"_ Alex glanced back at the forest and then upon biting his teeth turned and made a run for it.

Kaguya and Mokou looked back at Eirin with Mokou bluntly wondering, "Well?"

Eirin nodded her head, and the two went barreling after him while she raised her bow towards the forest and murmured in amusement, "Now you're the trapped rat, Butcher."

Alex's escape was proceeding swimmingly as he was able to drain the bamboo shoots of their elemental energy and regain a bit of his strength. But weaving through this closely knit forest was a tough endeavor. All that speed, but none of the reflexes to zip around like a lightning bolt off its leash.

Mokou had little such trouble, and burned right through the bamboo to get to him and go for a decapitating kick towards his neck. Alex rammed his forehead into her knee and snapped it in two, causing her to grimace. Then he grabbed onto her ankle and flung her back through the bamboo, breaking her spine in two and leaving her shambling on the ground.

Kaguya bombarded her comrade with lasers to kill her, and upon her revival Mokou scoffed and let out a disgruntled "Thanks" before flinging her entire body back towards Alex. Her body exuded bright red smoke as she crashed into Alex's body and exploded. His second Soul Shield protected him for but a moment, as once again Kaguya flexed her powers over the instaneous to make its time pass.

The explosion thus knocked him off his feet and forced his eyes shut, allowing Mokou the prime opportunity to go to town with a relentless bombardment of kicks, each carrying the explosive power of dynamite. When her leg was scathing white hot and looked ready to burnout, Mokou flipped above Alex and drove that broken leg square into his skull.

Alex's knees caved halfway down only for him to snag Mokou by the other leg and pound her against the ground in front of and behind him. For the final swing he threw his entire body into it and impaled Mokou's back through a broken bamboo shoot.

"Shit..." Mokou groaned like she had suffered a minor scrape just before exploding.

In the time it'd take for her to revive, Kaguya took the reins of battle into her gentle hands and assailed Alex with a ridiculous amount of lasers that moved instantaneously into his swiftly unguard body. Alex smashed the ground and grabbed onto the dirt, transmodifying it into glass that he ripped up to form a sheet glass mirror.

"No matter how fast light moves, it can still be reflected!" He boasted as Kaguya's offense was turned back on her. But with a cool mind and graceful air she stopped the lasers inches from her face with but a thought towards eternity.

Alex then punched the back of the mirror to topple it on her, riddling it with spikes for good measure. Mokou's revival was literally explosive and melted through the glass with ease, and then she snapped her fingers to combust the air surrounding Alex.

He leapt back to get some breathing room, but the moment he landed the ground gave way to a pitfall. His heart skipped a beat and he levitated in place with a boisterous laugh, "Ha! Did you seriously think that'd work?!"

A loud snap came from down below, and for a moment Alex looked down and saw that the bundled dirt was heavy enough to break off a tautly strung rope in the center of the pit. The rope whipped up and released the bowstring of a bow that had been centered almost _**too**_ perfectly towards where he floated now. Another of those accursed arrows brutally penetrated his chest and pinned him to the ground, and for good measure Mokou kicked down into the arrow to make it twist through Alex's muscles before breaching his back.

After that kick came a dozen more pounding away at his face with everything she had. Now Alex was relatively defenseless against her ignited wrath. Mokou kept her hands tucked in her pockets and grinned while battering away at him.

"Well? You give up yet?!" She asked.

"NEVER!" He managed to roar even as his teeth and jaw were getting chipped down.

He gambitted on his luck to pull him through and unleashed a burst of elements from his body. A wild flashfrost iced Mokou's body over with a brief glimpse of surprise forming beforehand. Alex spat chunky blood from his gut as he ripped himself off the ground and staggered to his feet. He slapped the frozen statue aside and watched it shatter on the ground before turning his attention to Kaguya.

He nudged his right brow as a dare for her to attack, but contrary to her ditzy appearance the princess was as wise as they came. She laid her feet to rest on the ground and waited. Alex swung for the arrow with his left hand while tapping the Gaia Temporis with the other, but Kaguya diverted his arms' path with her lasers, going so far as to force him to hear his joints snap like broken crackers.

Yet still his endurance persisted. His body convulsed so more, and the radiance of his wings began to flicker out of existence, but he held on. It didn't matter who or what came his way. He would triumph. He would win. And he would do it all for **her**.

"GRAAAAAH!" He ripped the arrow free from his chest and immediately wiped out all the bamboos within a fifty foot radius to restore his vigor. Then he swung his right hand up to the left and grabbed onto Mokou's foot as she came diving in.

"You're fighting for the wrong side Mokou!" He growled before throwing her to the ground. She caught herself on the landing by digging her fingers into the dirt and raising her head up high.

"Oh yeah? And just what side are **YOU** fighting for?!" She snarled in response.

Alex zipped his lips and quickly glanced to the right. There he saw a bunch of tiny rods of bamboo scattered across the ground from earlier scuffles and got an idea. While Mokou regrouped with Kaguya and prepared their next attack, he gently flicked a couple fingers to the left behind his back, raising that bamboo off the ground.

The next second that bamboo bolted through the air and ripped through the sides of the two immortals, drawing gallons of blood as they died. It was a messy scene, and one Alex closed his eyes to as the scent of raw grey matter briefly touched his sense of smell.

He then squeezed his fist tightly and pulled up various root from the fertile earth around where Kaguya would revive. Then he used his other fist to create diamonds from the ground where Mokou would revive. The moment they were back, he constrained them in their respective chosen elements. The diamonds insulated Mokou's heat, while the roots could dig into Kaguya's brain and prevent her from being able to focus her power over the instaneous from rotting the roots to mush.

Alex let out a deep breath, ignoring the squirming Mokou wasted time with as he gestured a finger towards her and said, "Well you aren't my enemy. So be good, and stay **here**."

He only managed one step forward before he saw a pair of glowing red eyes flash into view before him.

"What the..." Then he felt something scraping against the sides of his head and grasped tightly onto it with both hands, swinging his head back and letting out a series of maddened screams, "A...AA...AAAAGHH!"

The most unlikely of interlopers had arrived. Reisen Udongein Inaba, casting aside her business-like attire and wielding a strange golden gun shaped like a megaphone, stared deep, penetrating waves into Alex via her glowing red eyes which were wrought with tears.

"Rabbit, what the hell are you doing here?!" Mokou responded with both relief and surprise at her presence.

Reisen aimed her gun at the roots and shot an energy bullet through the center to unravel them. Then after Kaguya passed on the favor to Mokou by using her instanteous lasers to break the diamond down, the rabbit hastily drew her weapon up by her face and yelled, "Princess Kaguya! Mokou! Get out of here, please! Leave this to me!"

With an expression ripe with determination Reisen drew her gun down to her hip and sprinted towards Alex all whilst yelling, "MASTER EIRIN! FIRE NOW!"

A sharp "Pang!" rang throughout the forest as seconds later Eirin's arrow ripped through hundreds of yards of bamboo to reach its destination. Alex pulled himself up and the arrow stabbed into his right shoulder. This perfectly jerked his body aside and let him witness Reisen bravely charging at him with her weapon raised.

She started her assault with a pulse of energy from her gun that distorted Alex's vision and made him see the world in kaleidoscopic hexagons. She then hopped up and kneed him in the face to knock him off his feet, then used his stomach as a platform to safely hop back.

She stood sideways and raised her gun, her trigger finger shaky as she stared into boy's remorseless eyes. Her eyes widened with fury and with a disheartened sniffle she tugged at the trigger with all her might to fire one single bullet made of dense sound waves.

Alex swerved his body to the left and the bullet scraped his face, but the greater pain came from the bullet screaming into his ears a sound powerful enough to nearly rupture his eardrums. The madness from earlier warped his perception of his surroundings, and when combined with that accursed arrow he could only flail his arms around and hope for his elements to hit their mark.

Compressed winds sliced bamboo in twine, which were then burned to ash by flames hotter than an arid desert's winds. Reisen ducked and ran past them all without losing her mark, which she fired upon with bullets aimed perfectly at his elbows and knees. Finally, Alex crashed to the ground on his back and slammed his limp elbow against the ground, letting out a hollow scream of pain as the joint pinched his nerves.

He summoned his sword through nothing more than a miracle and squinted between the kaleidoscopic lines to identify Reisen's distinct colors. Then he thrust his sword with all his might, and it nearly penetrated clean through her stomach.

But Mokou flew in the way and let it breach hers, where she then grappled her bleeding hands around the blade to prevent it from going further. Reisen barely flinched and looked back just as Mokou exploded and sent the blade flying far away.

Reisen kept firing upon Alex's body, but he was able to mount something resembling a defense with the help of his various elements. He even hardened his own blood to accomplish this task, but long he could keep this up was a question in of itself.

His brain was slowly readjusting to the true form of reality, and once he had a clear shot of Reisen he squeezed his hands and forced the many defenses he'd made to bolt towards her. But he was a fool to think that this simple looking rabbit didn't have a bit of cunning to her name.

She had manipulated his perception again without his knowing, making him see double of her. The fake fared fine, while the real deal ran up ahead and purposefully tripped another pitfall for Alex to slide and ram his head into. Unable to trust his own senses as his head was rattled like a maraca, Alex forced his eyes closed and twirled his body clockwise, scraping his legs along the ground in hopes of tripping the real Reisen up.

The rabbit hopped over it and thrust her eyes wide open, bombarding Alex with brain waves to further his irrationality. She didn't get very far before Alex's volatile use of elements whipped up a tornado of fire and electricity and forced her to retreat quite a bit away.

Alex flung out of the tornado with fist wound up for a punch. As he brought it down Kaguya got in the way and had her chest penetrated straight through. Not stopping there, Alex spun around and let out a roar as he spread his dissipitating wings and unleashed a burst of fire in the second he had control over himself.

Though she was knocked onto her rear and dragged through the dirt, Reisen held her gun stable before her face and pulled the trigger with all her might, unleashing a string of explosive soundwave blasts that pummeled Alex all over when he turned around.

He was beginning to stagger, but wouldn't drop without a fight. Though having to push himself this hard against Reisen of all Youkai was definitely a wound to his pride that would never heal. He could comprehend what drove her so hard to fight against **him** , but the moment she chose this fight she should've have known there would be no taking it back.

Biting his teeth and closing his eyes, Alex raised his fist up high and thrust himself straight towards her location. Kaguya and Mokou both got in his way and rammed their bodies into his chest, forcing him to spit blood on their clothes.

"Ugh, how vulgar..." Kaguya stated calmly while her nostrils twitched from the stench.

"If you don't like it you can leave!" Mokou blurted, their eternal rivalry shining even in their darkest hour.

"You both should leave!" Reisen exclaimed as she rose up and cocked her gun at Alex's head.

"Hey princess, is your rabbit seriously worryin' about a couple of immortals?!" Mokou chuckled at the thought.

Before Kaguya could give a cheeky answer, Alex grabbed the backs of their heads and smashed them together, then rushed right for Reisen with fist squeezed hard enough to draw blood. The rabbit used her powers to deceive him with illusions, but just by closing his eyes he was able to smash the ground with all his might.

The element that erupted didn't matter. The real Reisen was swept off her feet regardless and fell hard on her back. Alex then opened his eyes and went right for the Gaia Temporis. The pain in his shoulder gave him heavy resistance, but he was able to tap it to remove yet another cruddy spell on the arrow. He then reached to pull it out, only to have his arm pulled right back by Mokou grappling onto it from the side.

"You're not going anywhere!" She roared. Alex tried to shake her off only for Kaguya to grab onto the other arm and pull it back.

Reisen glared at him with her lunatic eyes and plagued him even further with madness. His brain became so torn apart that he began to see his surroundings as nothing more than wobbly phantoms with voids for mouths and voices comprised of gargly screams.

Alex closed his eyes and the phantoms still plagued his mind, driving him to the brink of insanity as he began swinging his head around and spewing elements from his body to drive the immortals off. But during his mad flailing, the arrow slowly began to slip free from his chest, which only Reisen started to notice.

She aimed her gun up for his head but couldn't get a bead on the center of his skull from how madly he was swinging it about.

"Hold him still! Hurry!" She demanded with a brief glimpse of panic squeaking out of her voice.

The arrow pushed free and Reisen widened her eyes and pulled the trigger. Alex's own eyes thrust open and he swung his head up, his forehead absorbing the full impact of the bullet without flinching or bleeding. He glared with hollow eyes straight at the rabbit, and saw only a haunting void of nothingness.

His body became alit with wildfire that grew increasingly stronger over time. Mokou and Kaguya's arms got singed and they were forced off, while the fire just grew stronger and stronger, and stronger still...

"Shit...! He's going to-!"

" _ **KAAAABOOOOOMMM!"**_

Alex self-detonated the fire around his body and immediately wiped out all the bamboo within a half a mile radius, leaving a smoldering crater in its place. Kaguya was able to use her power over the instantaneous to grab Mokou and Reisen and hightail it out of there...But by the time she stopped to look back at the fireworks, there was only a depressing sight to behold at her feet.

Reisen's frontside was scorched like brimstone, and her skin raw and smoldering. Her lungs hacked up smoke from the fire she had inhaled, and she could hardly breathe or speak.

"P-Princess I...I..." She hacked and wheezed as the princess looked down at old pitiful her. She could not tell what the princess felt, her eyes had grown too hazy for such.

Her body trembled violently as her eyes cried their last tears and she bit her delicately singed lower lip. Kaguya knelt down and laid a hand in front of her eyes, and one to support her back.

"P-Please...avenge...the moon..." Reisen forced one last request through her mouth. Kaguya closed her eyes and used her power over the instanteous to let her cherished rabbit suffer not a second longer. Then she pulled her eyelids down gently with a glide of the hand and rose to her feet. A single tear then trickled down her left eye and fell upon Reisen's chest near the heart.

"Damn it..." Mokou bit her teeth and reared her head to look towards the sky. Then she saw Alex Whiter walk towards them from the corner of her eye and swung her head down, flinging tears free from her eyes as she roared, "DAMN IT ALL!"

Alex looked gruesome with the shadows the dying explosion cast upon him. Only his eyes reflected any light, and it was a pale crimson. His body was weakened, his hands were behind his back, and he knew he couldn't be fully restored without breaking apart the ground. He stared down and saw Reisen's corpse, and for a moment the right of his mouth twitched down towards a frown.

He closed his eyes, and remarked solemnly towards his foes, "Reisen fought as hard as she could. She went in knowing full well she could die...There's no reason to mourn her for that."

"Bastard...!" Right as Mokou was ready to charge in Eirin stopped her with but a word, "Cease."

She strolled up behind her comrades with bow aimed straight ahead and a cold look in her eyes, "He doesn't know the meaning of the word sympathy. He only feeds off anger."

Alex raised his head a bit and paid Eirin little attention as she commented, "Udongein shall be missed...But her sacrifice shall never be forgotten."

She tugged back on her bowstring and closed her right eye to steady her aim, "Now...Any last words, Butcher? Perhaps you'd like to express one last bit of regret...Over how foolish it was to attempt to kill the unkillable?"

"...You aren't immortal." Alex bluntly spoke.

"Ohohoho, but we are. The Hourai Elixir is perfect. Our immortality is our greatest gift, and our greatest punishment..."

"...Chang'e is dead." Alex raised his head and stared into the cold abyss of the doctor's eyes, and saw a spark flicker within them as his words finally reached.

Eirin smirked slightly and shook her head, "You can't bluff me."

"Her body was dismembered limb from limb. I saw AND smelled her organs after they were smeared across the ground by Junko. I stepped in a pool of her own BLOOD." Alex got firmer and nastier with the details, but never lost his certainty in what he spoke.

Eirin...could not formulate a response.

"Maybe your Hourai Elixir isn't as perfect as you thought it was. Maybe...its ability to stave off death can't account for things that its master didn't know existed."

Alex slowly raised his left hand, and pinched between his thumb and pointer finger was a leather glove that he let drop to the ground. Then he raised his other hand, and revealed that it was consumed from the wrist up to his shoulder in bright, neon flames.

Eirin's smirk started to become uneven, and she raised her bow back up as Alex grinned and spoke grimly, "You have one shot left. Better make it count."

Kaguya flew right in front of Eirin, and Mokou in front of her. Mokou swung her arm out and declared, "You'll have to go through all of us you bastard!"

"..." Alex squeezed his eyes shut, his heart feeling heavier than lead. With a head shake too subtle to see with the flames behind him, he murmured to himself mournfully, "So be it..."

He knew already how the events would play out if he charged in now. Kaguya would use her power of the instantaneous on Eirin's arrow, causing it to hit its mark guaranteed. But after exposing a potential flaw in her elixir Eirin was shaken up just enough that one more surprise would guarantee a long enough loss of focus for him to strike hard and true.

So he wiggled his brows, and the dirt behind all three of them sifted up and formed a very thin metallic spear aimed right at their backs. The moment he kicked his feet off the ground, the spear shot off as well, puncturing all three through their backs and avoiding all of their vitals organs. Alex bit his lower lip and didn't stop for a second.

He swung his burning fist and smashed through all three of their chests simultaneously. His spiritual flames roasted their innards alive, and burned even deeper than that. Alex stood beside Eirin as she gasped quietly for air and told her straight up the reason why she failed.

"Whoever drinks the Hourai Elixir has their bodies turned immortal...But my Blazing Overlord Fist doesn't just kill the body, it burns the soul as well. Even your Elixir can't undo the loss of one's self...But it'll take some time before I'll be able to recharge it. As you were the only people I was worried about having to use it on, I want you to consider it a show of respect that you forced me to use it, Eirin Yagokoro."

"...But this is goodbye." Alex ripped his fist free from their seering wounds and watched them collapse one by one onto the ground, his flames spurting free from their confines to burn their entire bodies away.

Alex then opened his eyes and watched that spot carefully. He registered only a bit of surprise when they revived, but their eyes and faces were frozen in the exact same spot they died in. Without a soul, without a sense of self, their bodies were hollow husks sustained worthlessly by the Hourai Elixir.

"...But I can't take any risks." He turned away while flicking his left fingers up, causing multiple layers of steel and diamond to cage their bodies in a dome.

With one final glance over his shoulder he murmured, "If you happened to survive this...I'll be back to free you later before I leave this place. If you didn't, well..."

Alex squeezed his eyes shut and strolled away from their bodies and faintly saw each of the people he has killed so far. Once the Hourai victims had appeared amongst them, he began to whisper in a slow, melancholic voice, "Five...Six...Seven..."

Upon picking up and putting his glove back on, he squeezed his hand into a fist and looked narrowly up ahead, "Seven lives...That's the amount of blood we will share in Hell together, Yukari."

As he walked towards the edge of the burning forest, he raised his head and held regret over Eirin's choices. He had truly, truly wished that she would've helped him stop Yukari, and now that she was gone all he could do is mutter "Damn it..." and wonder what his next move could even be...

 _Next Time: A Prince and his People_


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: The Fall of Legends**

Fifteen minutes after the fall of Eientei, a gathering of a few certain folk was occurring at the Myouren Temple. It wasn't a large gathering. Just the usual suspects. Byakuren, her followers, and even the likes of Futo and Tojiko from the Taoist faction were there. Those two had just arrived at their doorstep, with Futo trembling like she was walking in the middle of a small earthquake.

Byakuren eased her own shaken allies, most particularly Kyouko, with the gentle serenade of her voice, and then approached the two Taoists with a rather forced smile.

"Is it just the two of you?" She pondered as she peered over the peak of Futo's hat with a longing, worrying gaze.

Futo tucked her hands into her sleeves and remarked, "Our Crown Prince said there was something she wanted to check-eth before coming here. I-I am afraid..."

"Afraid of what, dear Futo?" The familiar bravado of Futo's cherished prince put her courage into overdrive as she spun around and saw her caped leader stroll past the gates, her shaku pivoted in the usual position before her chin.

"T-That you..." A single tear was shaken off Futo's face as she stretched her grin across the breadeth of her face and boasted, "Didn't leave any of that accursed-eth Phoenix of Destruction for us to pummel-eth!"

"Hahaha!" Miko stopped and let out a jovial guffaw, and then whispered with a tiny smile, "Who is to say really? Perhaps he is too afraid to confront _me_!"

Miko then lowered her head and with a gentle nudge towards the temple remarked, "Be with the others you two. I need to speak with Hijiri alone for a bit."

Futo and Tojiko complied and wandered right on over with the rest of the Myouren crew. Miko watched for a bit, and paid close attention to the way their mouths moved. She was adept at speaking many tongues, even that of silence. And what their lips told her was that they were all wondering what they were going to do. They were scared, frightened, and she knew that this was all in spite of Byakuren's best efforts.

Thus when the priestess approached her, Miko hung her head with a sigh and asked, "It hasn't been easy holding down the fort, has it Hijiri?"

"We've...been managing," She responded while trying to keep her smile strong. But with her back turned towards her followers, she couldn't help but let it sag upon looking up at the dark, cloudy sky, "How about you?"

"I've been taking a walk. Trying to clear my head and get an understanding of what is happening." Miko remarked with her undying confidence.

"And?" Byakuren prodded with mild concern.

"...Everyone's in a state of panic. I can't blame them...To think that witch would be right about his arrival," Miko turned aside and the cold, unnatural wind swayed her cape to cover her body as she looked towards the sky, "I went to see what he left at the Hakurei's Shrine."

"...What was it?" Byakuren hesitantly asked, sensing the discomfort in her comrades' voice.

"The head of the Yamaxanadu of Gensokyo...That's all Marisa could bring herself to tell me. Poor girl was shaken up the likes of which I'd never seen."

"The judge of the afterlife? Is it actually possible to kill them?" Byakuren murmured.

"We cannot perceive things as if they are or are not possible anymore, Hijiri," Miko swiveled her head aside and, for someone like her, seeing a glare as stiff as stone was of serious concern, "He has arrived. He has drawn first blood. Not just from the Yamaxanadu, but from the folk of Eientei as well."

Byakuren sharply raised her head and frowned, "W-What?"

Miko closed her eyes and let out a short, quiet gasp. Byakuren squeezed her hands down by her waist and looked back towards the temple, "...We had him come to this temple. You...you let him into your domain. He just looked like any other boy...a-and now."

"Get a hold of yourself Hijiri. Its not time to jump to conclusions yet." Miko spoke with the stern voice she'd used to give sermons to the people she leads.

Unleashing her glorious charisma in the form of swinging her cape aside with the gentle brush of the hand and sparkling radiantly like the starry night, Miko exclaimed, "Even if the world seems dark, we can still fight to reclaim the dawn!"

That admittedly put some hope back in Byakuren's heart, and with a chuckle and smile she said, "Nothing ever fazes you, does it Miko?"

The Crown Prince laid her arm to rest and tapped her shaku against her chin, "That's hardly worth boasting about. Of course a Prince must stand strong! To be the upstanding pillar of support for her pillar, a Prince cannot flaunt even a single flaw."

But immediately after saying so, Miko let out a long sigh that of course her friend could not ignore, "...You're not being honest with me about something Miko."

"Ha! Despite what I just boasted, you see right through me yet again Hijiri," This brought a long, tender smile to her face as she spun back to look her in the eyes and whispered under breath, "There is something I wish to ask of you...Not as a Prince...But as a friend."

Byakuren's heart sank slightly, and she squeezed her hands together to tough out what she knew would only be a grim omen, "I'm listening."

"...What I am about to do is something with lasting consequences for us all. Even if I am to succeed, I..." Miko bit her lower lip and sucked in a deep breath, then said after letting out a sigh, "I am entrusting Futo and Tojiko to you, Hijiri. They are a fickle pair, but I do believe they'll fit right in."

Byakuren swung her hands up to grab Miko's and pull her in closer. The Crown Prince grimaced at how tightly she held on and how deeply she looked into her eyes, and was suddenly starting to raise her voice, "Don't think that way! We can come up with a plan. Together! You, me, and Mamizou...If we put our heads together, we can-"

"Hijiri, Mamizou isn't here. Did you not realize that?" Miko said with a sullen gaze. Byakuren stopped and looked back, counting up all the people on the steps by their names, "Shou, Ichirin, Unzan, Nazrin, Nue, Murasa, Kyouko, Kogasa, Futo, Tojiko, and..."

Upon letting out a pale gasp, Byakuren turned back around and found that Miko was now averse to looking her in the eyes as she whispered, "To think that we used to be at each other's throats Hijiri. That seemed so long, long ago...Almost like it was a dream."

The Crown Prince closed her eyes and spoke under her breath, "To think that reality would wind up being the nightmare..."

Byakuren wanted to say something, speak what was glued to the tip of her tongue, but her heart just continued to sink. And Miko would ultimately rob her of that chance by staring deep into her eyes and commenting, "There's no more time Hijiri."

And then raising her voice upon closing her eyes, "Because you are already here, aren't you, Alex Whiter?!"

He was standing right there at the gates, no quieter than a mouse. His hands were tucked into his pockets and his body hunched over, showing that he was feeling a bit tired. The announcement of his arrival brought the panicked bunch at the temple's front steps to cobble together and slam up against the door.

Byakuren backed up from Miko and began to raise her fists, only for the Crown Prince to press them down and gently shake her head. Miko then took the lead and approached Alex with a smile, "And to what do we owe the honor of your company?"

"You know why I'm here Miko." Alex cut right to the chase, but spoke with mild respect. Miko raised her brows and let out a curious hum, then leaned her head back and chuckled.

"To talk about whether or not we are with you or against you, no?"

Alex grumbled through a scrunched up mouth and then pressed the issue bluntly, "Obviously all of you haven't gathered here to host a party."

"Ignore the others," Miko hastily responded, "If there's a matter to discuss, then you can do so alone with me."

"Are you speaking for everyone here or...?"

"Like I said. Just myself," Miko gave a smarmy grin and asked, "Unless...there is something wrong with this?"

"Why are you asking me?" Alex closed his eyes and sighed, "If this is what you want, then I don't give a shit either way."

"Aha! Perfect then!" Miko raised her head with a loud, haughty laugh, "Shall we depart for me Senkai then? I'd presume you'd want as little interruptions as physically possible."

Alex nodded softly and Miko raised her brows to ask, "Are you sure? You do not suspect a trap?"

"You?" He grinned and snorted a brief chuckle, "I have it on good authority that you won't try anything funny Miko."

"Hehe. As I can only imagine you would!" Miko was proud to hear that, and after striking her shaku out from her chest she pointed for the ground and opened a wide white gap from the cracks in the ground.

"Shall we?"

"You first, of course." Alex said while barely putting the effort into waving for the gap.

"Of course." Miko snidely aped with a nod. But as she took the first step forward, Futo bellowed out in fury.

"Crown Prince! Do not acquiesce-eth to his requests! He is deserved-eth none of your mercy!"

"Hey peanut gallery. Can it!" Alex remarked while stamping the ground with one foot.

"Its quite alright. They shall be a non-issue," Miko assured before turning back around and looking past Byakuren to state, "Futo! As your Crown Prince, I request that you stay strong, now and forever...I have faith that you can do so."

Then her gaze went towards Byakuren for but a moment, where with the quietest of smiles she then spun around and walked into her own gap without a word. Alex followed suit, and the gap was zipped shut.

Miko's Senkai was as quiet and peaceful as Alex remembered it. The atmosphere was soft and foggy, and her Divine Mausoleum looked utterly mystical because of that. Miko was the one in the lead, and she was taking her dear sweet time moving forward.

Each step of hers was like a snail's crawl, and Alex was the anchor trudging along behind her. He didn't really care one way or another how long she was taking. It certainly didn't _feel_ like she was planning a trap.

Miko just stopped. Not in any special spot, but the way she said "This is fine" suggested it was. They were halfway to the Mausoleum from where they had begun. Mikoe slowly turned around and kept her chin close to her chest for a bit, pondering in silence.

Alex broke that silence by asking, "Did you ever get your robe back?"

"Oh?" Miko perked her head up in surprise and smiled, "That is what you wish to start with?"

"All that is going on...And you ask about a robe? Haha, it is like we are old friends conversing in a park about days gone past." Miko felt eager to laugh about that, but knew it was not the time.

"Yes," She then said, "The robe was returned just fine. Though if I were to describe the state it was in..."

With a light blush she cough up her answer, "Well, I'm not sure there are words appropriate enough for me to speak."

Alex got mildly embarrassed and fought hard against the urge to smile. Miko then shifted her brows down and inquired, "Speaking of which...Have you been to see Mamizou recently?"

Alex felt his stomach churn for reasons he could not explain as he replied, "Not since the day after the festival...Why?"

"...You might be surprised to find that she is no longer a part of this world." She cast out with a stoic voice.

Alex knew what she meant. By god did he know...But his denial was so strong that he spoke otherwise while nervously biting his teeth, "You...You mean she returned to the Outside World, right?"

She closed her eyes and kept her voice in a dulcet whisper, "I went straight to the village to search for Kokoro. Had no such luck. She must have gone and taken refuge elsewhere. So I took my leave on the usual route out into the forest. Even in these troubling times I presumed I'd be safe alone. Then I began to smell blood. Fresh...blood. I couldn't ignore it. Even if I wanted to."

"...I immediately recognized the body by the tail. Her chest had been cut open and her heart ripped out. Judging by her hollow eyes, she didn't see it coming."

Alex squeezed his fists deep within his pockets and let out a slowly unhinging chuckle while steam rose in his heart.

"She's...dead?" Though he bit his teeth into a scowl, only the tiniest part of it was shown to Miko.

"...You had nothing to do with this, right?" She asked, fanning the flames in his heart to a boil.

"I would **never** lay a hand on her!" Alex gnashed at her with a bigger scowl and stared deep into her eyes as he explained, "You KNOW who did this."

"Ah yes. The boogeywoman." Miko saw that fire in his eyes explode like dynamite and yet with a mellow vibe to her posture she whispered, "Do not take that as an insult. Given the circumstances, I have every right to be suspicious...But I am still willing to hear your side of the story."

Alex squeezed his eyes shut and released his frustration in a hiss that grew into a loud, skyward shout as he jerked away from Miko and walked a couple steps forward. He grabbed onto the side of his head and felt like tearing his own brain out just to keep the anger gone for good.

"What do I even need to say?" Alex gazed over his shoulder, "I heard Mamizou's story. You were there. You, her, Byakuren..."

"This **shouldn't** be up for debate. Yukari's a goddamn animal that needs to be caged or put down."

"Sure, you heard the tanuki's perspective...But not mine," Miko stated boldly in the face of turmoil, "I may not advocate Yukari's methods, but its not as though I don't understand why she employs them."

"Her love of Gensokyo is as true as it gets," Miko closed her eyes and smiled, "Love makes you do good things. Love makes you do stupid things."

Alex hung his head and took in a deep breath to relax, then murmured bitterly through his teeth, "So what? And that's supposed to justify what she did?"

"To you? ...Or to that girl, Shina Aurora?"

Her question was a cold nail pounded through Alex's heart that stilled him entirely. He bit his lower lip, and Miko smirked before remarking, "Love goes both ways. 'Tis neither good nor evil."

There was a long, drawn out silence before the Crown Prince could muster up the courage to ask, "Is she alive?"

"...I don't know." Alex said with a heavy murmur.

"Are you sure?"

He stamped his feet upon turning around and growled through his teeth, "I. Don't. KNOW!"

The anguish and loneliness in his voice was as real as her and him. His breath was ragged, and she could tell he was running on fumes. And yet, she pushed him further with a simple question, "Then why haven't you confirmed this?"

Her answer, unsurprisingly, was but a drape of silence descending before his face.

Miko laid her shaku down by her hip and murmured "I see" as though unsurprised.

"Because you could not bear the thought of knowing she might no longer be alive. Or that, even if she were, she'd no longer see you the same way she did before. You're afraid of holding her close, but you're even more afraid of letting her go."

"...That's a little too on the nose," Alex grumbled, "Did your 'divine hearing' tell you that?"

"Hardly," She admitted right away, humbling herself with a grin, "It was all guesswork."

She then looked at him in the eyes, each of hers glistening with a wisdom beyond humanity's own, "But if there's one thing I can say for certain...Is that you are afraid of being the father of her child."

Alex's body went numb after he turned around and saw Miko's self-assured smile, "I told you I saw my robe again. What? Did you presume me daft in those ways of love?"

After a short, jolly laugh, Miko settled her chin to rest on her chest.

"...Return to her, Alex Whiter."

"What?"

"There's still time to turn back. Find her. Embrace her. Never let her go. I'm sure she will understand."

"...She saw me die." Alex whispered to himself. But when Miko took interest, he quickly shook his head and said, "I can't go back. As long as I'm alive, anyone I care for will be caught in the crosshairs if I get close. You already saw what happened to Mamizou...I have no choice. I will not stop until Yukari's done for."

Miko's eyes sank as she spoke stoically towards the boy, "Are you sure about this?"

Alex gave it a second to digest his thoughts then nodded his head softly.

"You've only instigated the chaos. You haven't seen it unfold firsthand like I have. They are all afraid. For their lives...and of you."

"...And I'm sorry about that. I truly am..." Alex whispered under his breath.

"There are some that despise Yukari, who at the same time love Gensokyo for what it is. With their peace threatened though, they will flock together to deal with the immediate threat, not the one lurking in the shadows. At the rate things are going, there will barely be any allies for you to rally to your cause. And as more and more people come after you, that number will dwindle, but the blood shed shall grow..."

"Eventually, all of Gensokyo will be in ruins, even if perchance someone stops you..."

"Miko, whose side are you on?" Alex firmly pondered aloud.

She smiled and yelled proudly to the heavens with her head held high, "My loyalty shall always be towards the people under my rule! But today I shall not stand alongside humanity as their champion, but the Youkai as well!"

She dropped her shaku to the ground and reached for the sheath dangling from her waist. Alex bit his teeth and growled, "What are you doing?"

"In the name of peace I offer myself as the sacrifice! My body, whether in life or death, shall burn bright as a star through the darkness! And my name, the name of the Prince Shoutoku, shall be carved into the annals of legend, my story retold across many generations to come until the end of eternity!"

She slyly raised her brows and remarked, "Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"No..." Alex whispered in a disheartened voice before yelling at her harshly, "Don't be a fool! There's nothing to gain from this!"

"Then if you wish to dissuade me, withdraw from Gensokyo at once as per my advice! Otherwise..." Miko cast her sheath off with a flick of her left hand and let it crash to the ground with barely a sound. She suspended her blade, which cast a light as bright and yellow as the morning sun, aloft before her face.

"Draw your sword, and face me in a duel to the death, Elemental Overlord!"

Alex muttered "Damn it" a couple times and swung his right arm up and out to draw his sword out of hiding. He then squeezed it in both hands and held it before his waist, scowling all the while.

"Hahaha! Wonderful! Lets this be a duel for the ages!"

The two locked eyes. Miko swung her sword beside her head while Alex's rose overhead. The absolute silence of this realm was the perfect backdrop for their duel, as when their blades finally collided the thunderous clang was like a harmonious bell ring.

 **THE TRUE ADMINISTRATOR OF GENSOKYO:** _ **TOYOSATOMIMI NO MIKO**_

The wind their blades kicked up blew Miko's cape up to her shoulders, where it blew around like a kite caught up in a storm. The two were then forced back five feet each. Alex swung his head up and looked a bit shook from the strength she had displayed. But the surprises were far from over.

"Here I come!" Miko rushed at him with blinding speed and attack his shoulders from his left. He was forced to hold his blade downward with his arms curved before his face just to block it. After putting him in this compromising position Miko spun her sword downward with a flick of the wirst and stabbed it right towards his feet.

Alex leapt back and slashed his sword out twice before he blinked once, with Miko perfectly parrying each one. If swordsmanship could be compared to artistry, then the way Miko handled her blade would be like how a painter handles acrylic paint, with swift, gentle strokes that engrave her heart into whatever happens to be in front of her.

Miko swiveled her body to the right and brush her cape out of the way as she eyed Alex in her sight and leapt off the ground, spinning around and around to repeatedly slice at him like a pinwheel of blades. Alex was on the defensive and was driven back to the floor in a second with his knees bent halfway down.

Miko ended the assault by swinging her blade down in one singular stroke that broke a shockwave around the boy's feet.

" _She's stronger than she looks...!"_ Alex gnashed his teeth together and then held onto his blade with all his strength as he swung it out, repelling her away.

She landed with a couple hops to maintain balance, then flung herself forward while stabbing the air repeatedly, leaving plenty of sparkles in the air every time her blade connected with Alex's. She evaded his defense and prodded his stomach and arms a few times before he pulled away, dragging his blade down against his hip like it was too heavy to wield.

Miko leapt with a clockwise twirl and slashed forth with a gliding crescent. Alex leaned his upper body back and sucked his gut in before it was cut, then swung his blade in an uppercut.

His slice cut the air roughly with fire until it connected with the underside of Miko's blade, upon which flames spurted like a firework going off. Miko's blade flew out of her hand and flipped around along with her. She made a graceful landing ten feet back and shook her wrist free of pain before using it to snatch the blade right out of the air.

Alex spun his sword around twice and held it backhanded, his body burning with fire. All that fire spun into his blade and followed him along as he slashed forward, sending a wave of it out towards Miko. She responded with a guffaw of raw bravado and then cut the wave down with a slash of blinding light that was swung so fast her cape parted all the way.

From underneath the folds of her cape a series of golden glints heralded the summoning of sparkling arrows to be thrown at his body at lightspeed. Alex twirled his blade quickly before his body, using the fire to expand the range it was able to shield him.

Miko lunged forth and stabbed her blade in-between the pinwheel, digging it in close to his hands so the tip of the blade was but centimeters from his elbow. A couple lasers pecked Alex's face and made him squint, keeping him ignorant to Miko's next daring move.

Her decision was planned well in advance, for with a hearty thrust she weaved her blade over his elbow and wounded his chest. She pulled her blade out the instant after and the light burned any blood that could stain it. Alex stumbled a step back and bit his teeth, then thrust his own blade towards her shoulder.

She swerved to the right and sunk into her cape, escaping underneath his line of sight by sliding forth to his backside. She twirled around and cut at his shoulder blades, but Alex was able to meet and deflect her attacks in the nick of time.

He slashed down at her second attack with all his strength and managed to put a nasty kink in her wrist that delayed her ability to react to his next move. He grabbed onto his blade in both hands and slashed upward, dragging up a wildstorm of flames in his wake.

The flames obscured the blade's position from her eyes, so she closed them shut and used her heightened Taoist instincts to sense the change in the air's flow. The heat of his blade penetrated towards her chest, and thus it was only natural that she'd leapt over it.

She blew the flames aside with a swing of her cape upon landing gently atop the fangs of his blade, which she used to propel himself over him, much to his surprise. Like a feather in the wind, she gently descended to the ground and spun as fate dictated, all while wearing that cherished, charismatic smile.

" _How can she still smile?"_ Alex was finding himself envious of her ability to do so, and his head sagged slightly while his heart felt like it turned to stone.

"What's wrong? Have you been bewitched by my swordsmanship?" Miko remarked while swinging her right arm up and sparkles glistening beside her face.

Alex grabbed his blade in both hands and rushed the Crown Prince without a second thought. She let out an "Oho!" and parried his valiant stab with the full length of her blade. He then attacked with broad strokes, and Miko lashed her blade out twice to fend off each one.

She hopped back to put some distance between them and thrust the tip of her blade out repeatedly to keep that distance. With just a single hand she was able to keep Alex at bay for a few moments. But it was a move that'd prove costly when that precious time had passed.

Alex grew frustrated with this defensive game she played and smashed his blade into the bottom of hers with a raging blow to dislodge it from her hand. It twirled around a few feet overhead, and with a playful smile she leapt after and grabbed it both hands. The radiance of her blade doubled in size and she prepared to stab it down.

Alex leapt ten feet away in a single bounce, yet the stab was not what was to be feared, but what came afterwards. A geyser of light erupted under his feet and scorched him for a good five seconds before she ripped the blade free and stood upright, cutting through the geyser with an air slash.

Alex blocked that attack and his eyes were squinted in a peeved manner. With a haughty smirk she swung her cape aside and remarked, "Now you're getting into it!"

He charged straight forward and brought his blade down after hopping to add to its power. When the blade smashed into Miko's it erupted with flames that lashed against her body. He smashed his blade down twice more and managed to force her to let out a loud "Oomph!" that showed him his assault was effective.

Miko took advantage of the time it took for each swing to be peformed to spin her whole body around, whipping out a ring of light from her blade to strike Alex in the gut and send him flying back. When he landed he wobbled around with a burning sensation in his stomach coming from the wound Miko had inflicted earlier.

He held his hand atop it and grunted and hissed until the pain started to cool down. Then he panted and looked over at Miko, who had knelt and planted her sword in the ground to take a temporary break. She had looked as though she had barely broken a sweat.

"I'll be the first to admit I underestimated you! You definitely live up to your title as the Crown Prince of Shoutoku!" Alex yelled with sincere praise.

"And you the same, Elemental Overlord..." Miko relayed her views with an unflinching smirk, "But what do you say we take off the kid gloves?"

Alex widened his eyes for a brief moment and warned her, "Are you sure about that?"

"I requested a duel to the death. Do not mock me by holding back!"

The reverb of her mighty voice sent this wonderful shiver down Alex's spine that brought his lips to a grin. He grabbed onto the blade's seven triggers and pulled them down as he lashed the blade aside and exclaimed, "You asked for it, Toyosatomimi no Miko!"

As the golden flames erupted from his body to signal his transformation, Miko twisted her hand excitedly around the handle of her weapon, waiting for the flames to subside and his wings to spread wide.

"Very well...No more holding BACK!" Miko grit her teeth harder than a seasoned warrior fighting to the brink of death in war and the light of her blade became twisted and black. What was once bright as a sun was now dark enough to eclipse it. Yet in its own strange manner, its shone with incredible radiance. She pulled the blade free from the ground and cracked it apart, then grabbed the collar of her cape and threw the whole thing right off.

Alex smiled with glee and told her straight up, "Congrats! You have less pride than the Lunarians!"

"Pride...and something more! That is what guides our blades to fight!" With that valiant remark the two rushed each other and attacked with speeds that no normal human'd be able to react to.

As they hacked away at each other with a furious, undying resolve, the fog high above was parted to reveal the white empty void that was this realm's true form. Alex and Miko were splashed with the energies of their own attacks, the prolonged exposure forcing their retreat so they could rub their eyes clean.

After a few vigorous rubs they turned to face each other and swung their blades up in very much the same manner. One upward slash, curved in perfectly fine half-circle. The clashing blades exploded upon contact with each other and hurtled their owners back a few feet, whipping their arm down to their hip.

" _This isn't just her own strength...!"_ Alex swung his head forward and bit his teeth down, then carved the air straight down and sent a wave of fire hurtling along the ground.

Miko leapt towards it and whipped her blade forward to cut her way through, stabbing the tip of her blade forthright at his face. He pivoted it out of the way and yet it still cut through his soul shield and drew blood from his cheek.

Alex pushed his face into the blade and let it bleed out as he thrust himself forward and cut at Miko's legs. He hit just below the knees, which was only enough to wobble her stance for a brief moment upon landing. She drew her blade back and swung it out with all her might, carving a large horizontal scar into the air that was suspended upon Alex blocking it.

But then she rose over it with a backflip and stabbed her blade down to penetrate the scar with another, causing a chain reaction that blew up in Alex's face and hurtled him back through the air. Miko went for another stab at his stomach, but Alex managed to get himself composed and block it with the blunt edge of his blade.

His back rammed into the ground and blistered his skin until Miko hopped off. She took a page out of Alex's book and sliced twice to send energy waves at him, which he was a little less successful blocking while he tried to stand up.

Alex laid a hand on and straightened his back until the bones cracked, then thrust his sword out before his right shoulder and heeded Miko's stance. She was pulling the blade back behind her back and cautiously had her eye on his legs. She was waiting for him to make the first move.

And deliver that move, he would. He ran headlong into the perimeter of her blade's swing and watched as her wrist twisted around the handle. She swung with all her might, coating the air in a thick black light. Alex leapt and turned over the energy. He kept his spin going even after flying over the Crown Prince, who was still midswing.

Upon dropping behind her he spun around and went for the back of her head. Yet she had masterfully predicted his every step and spun her sword into a backhanded grip to block his strike. She rose up high and let go of her blade for a second as she danced around and snagged it out of the air, managing to cut along Alex's fingers in the same stroke.

Alex gripped his blade tigher even at the cost of the pain burning through his nerves and attacked with explosive slashes that lit up the dismal atmosphere of Senkai. Miko was forced to retreat with every blow, yet struck with all her might as well. Cutting through the explosions with her black light blade, her smile continued to shine.

It was at that point in the battle that Alex started to see what she meant. Miko was drawing on the same power that he was. The power of determination coursed through her veins and allowed her to draw on even greater strength to prevail and overcome everything he was throwing at her.

That must be why, even though it was unlike him, he engaged the Crown Prince in a duel of swords. The subtle echoes of determination from their hearts beat in perfect sync. The vow to duel to the death was one of unspoken respect towards each other, even if this was but their second meeting.

"But I will not lose to you!" Alex roared as he dredged his blade through the ground and ripped it up with an eruption of crackling fire.

Miko hopped away from the falling embers and thrust herself forward the moment she landed. She broke right through his defenses with a single stab to the left shoulder, leaving it limp in a second. She pulled the blade out slightly with a hearty chuckle and tried to cut along the breadth of his chest, only for him to raise his blade to bash hers free from her grasp once more.

Miko leapt right after it and kicked her feet off the air to get away from his jumping slash. He dove after and slashed at her some more, kicking up the pace. Immediately after landing Miko ducked down and let Alex fly over her back, giving her a few precious seconds to build up more energy in her blade.

Alex swung around and was overcome with the shadow the black light cast as it towered clear into the heavens. Miko swung the blade downward without hesitation and Alex barely managed to jump away from it in time. This attack left a permanent cascade of energy upon the battlefield.

Miko ran alongside and dragged her blade through it, whipping it out once she was set to strike Alex's vulnerable side. Alex brought his blade to his shoulder's aid but suffered from the recoil as the blunt edge rammed into it and further shot the pain through his nerves.

"Ah...Ahh!" The pained scream manifested as a loud hiss as his feet dug through the ground in silence.

He stood tall and stared at Miko, who came flying at him once more. She wouldn't quit. Nothing but death could still her blade.

It just felt like such a waste. All this determination, all this fighting...And she spent it on him, not Yukari.

He closed his eyes and growled, then flared them right back open with red in his irises and a permanent scowl of anger towards that witch. He grabbed his sword in one hand and swung it out with all he had as Miko landed. Her blade went flying far back overhead. She silently closed her eyes, and as he ran his blade through her chest her own blade lodged itself into the ground in a perfectly upright position.

Alex trembled and was on the verge of shouting in anger that this had to happen, but was stopped by the curious lack of blood leaking from Miko's wound. She caught this abject look of surprise and grinned from cheek-to-cheek as she remarked in a dulcet tone, "Do not be alarmed. I was never 'alive' to begin with."

"Futo, Tojiko and myself...We became Shikaisen in hopes of attainting immortality. We discarded flesh and blood and were one day reborn anew in Gensokyo..." Miko closed her eyes and chuckled, "Though that never precluded us from death, I had always presumed I would've lasted...just a bit longer than this."

Alex looked down at the ground and squeezed his blade tighter as she continued, "There was still so much to do...So much to say. To think that even an immortal would find their time sparse and fleeting. There's honestly some irony to that."

"...You didn't have to do this. This wasn't determination, it was suicide!" Alex lambasted her with an immense fury that yet again was born of Yukari's part in this.

"Determination? My boy it was never about 'determination'. It was about something greater. Greater than us all. Something we spoke about just recently, and cherish more than we do our material bodies."

Miko closed her eyes and smirked, "But I suppose none of that matters now does it? At least not for me. All I can perform now is one final act of defiance against the chaos that sweeps through our land."

Miko lowered her hands to her hips and spoke with a solemn melancholy, "The moment you pull your blade free I will die...And shall mark the end of my Senkai. But it shall be no normal farewell. No, I intend to part this world in grandeur. Time shall accelerate only within this realm. My body, the Mausoleum, everything I have created shall be turned to dust, until eventually the only thing left is oblivion. And as you wander aimlessly through oblivion, eventually you too shall succumb to the dust as well, as with my passing there will be no way for you to escape."

"...I say this not out of malice, but as my final edict. All I wish to ask of you, Elemental Overlord...Was if all this was really worth it?"

Alex ripped the blade free from her chest so she'd collapse onto the ground. As the glimmer of light left her eyes, she saw only his face in her final moments. There was no panic, no concern, no fear. So with her final breath, she dully let out a regretful "Oh..."

The moment her body hit the floor, her last act of defiance began. Time zipped through decades and centuries within seconds. Her lifeless body rotted away to dust, and not long after the Mausoleum suffered the same fate. The fog in the sky grew dark and grey, then black and devoid of hope.

Yet Alex stood through it all, unaffected due to factors that were beyond Miko's control. He limply pulled the Gaia Temporis from his pocket and crushed it tightly around his hand. With a bitter, tired scowl, he murmured to the void, "You beat me fair and square Miko...Its not your fault that I cheated you of your victory."

Hanging his shoulders and shaking his head, he muttered the number "Eight" and used the enigmatic stone to rip open a hole in space-time that'd allow him to return to Gensokyo. But as he stepped through that portal and left Senkai to complete its oblivion, he had this sinking feeling in his heart that that number would soon surely grow...

 _Next Time: Desperate_


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7: The Fall of Love**

Alex quietly strolled out of the portal he had ripped open from Senkai and wandered out onto the front steps of the Myouren Temple. He lifted his head up, not fully intending for this to be his destination. But now he'd have to deal with the stares of the gathered Youkai and Byakuren regardless.

His head remained hunch in a sullen state of existence as their eyes tempered onto him as their primary point of focus. Byakuren's in particular were hard to handle, as in a way it reminded him of **her** yet again.

" _What am I supposed to say?"_ He asked himself in the face of this mass confusion, _"They couldn't have known that Miko was planning to go out this way..."_

He closed his eyes, hoping that sealing his view of their judgmental stares would help him concentrate. But there was no answer to muster up that would satisfy all parties. He just wished he could turn back the hands of time and reclaim the life that was lost.

But the stone was a disobedient pup...And if it was as simple as snapping his fingers to fix every mistake he made, then he'd never be in this predicament to begin with. It was his blade that did the dirty deed. It was his hands that snatched the life from out of Miko's body and crushed it in an instant. There was no point turning away from what he'd done...And no point lying to them about how it happened.

It was Futo who ultimately pressed him first on this matter. She stepped out amongst the crowd, teetering on the edge of the stairs with barely any stability to her thimble legs. She looked cold, and the front of her dress was soggy.

" _She must have been crying the whole time..."_ Alex bit his front teeth down and muttered a hoarse "Damn it all..." as his heart sank into the pit of his stomach.

"Where is my Crown Prince?" Futo asked, her melancholy whisper but a sign that a part of her already knew the truth.

He opened his eyes partway and couldn't direct his full attention to the Shikaisen. All he saw was her stamp one foot on the ground and throw her fists down in a child-like rage as she asked again, "I asked...Where is my Crown Prince?!"

"She went-eth with you alone! And alone you return-eth! S-So where did she go...?!" Her quibbling lips and sagging eyes weren't enough. Now she was digging her fingers into her palms, her body antsy to just hear something, ANYTHING, to the contrary of her beliefs.

"Futo, calm down..." Ichirin tried to calmly put a hand on Futo's shoulder while looking mournful herself, but Futo just swatted it away and screamed, "UNHAND ME!"

She then threw that very same hand accusingly towards Alex and yelled, "He murdered her! He murdered the Crown Prince!"

With a deep sniffle while biting her lower lip, Futo met the silenced Alex and gasped at him, "Why...why won't you say-eth anything?!"

" _...What am I supposed to say?"_ He asked himself again with a more pained tone. Upon shaking his head he raised it higher and remarked, "That's right. I...killed Toyosatomimi no Miko."

Futo froze up and stumbled back with her right sleeve drawn up below her chin. On the verge of fainting, it was Tojiko that came to help her stay upright. Alex glanced over at Byakuren. She was subtly holding her breath, but her paling skin and trembling hands revealed that she was devastated by this news as well.

He raised his head and tried his best to put a positive spin on what happened, "She chose to go of her own free will...In the hopes of protecting all of Gensokyo from me. To the very end, she loved everything about this world...Especially its people."

"...She wouldn't want you to mourn her death." All that sounded right both in his head and aloud. He then let out a long sigh and gripped his hands tightly inside his pockets.

"...I know I can't force anyone to fight a battle they don't want any part of. I just assumed out of everyone I came across, you guys would've been jumping at the chance to get payback on Yukari."

He raised his right hand to scratch the side of his head and grumbled, "But forget it. I won't bother you about it anymore."

He gave one firm look at Byakuren and warned her gently, "Oh, and there's something Miko wanted me to pass on."

That wasn't true, but he felt it was worth noting anyway, "She tried to find Kokoro in the Human Village but had no luck. You might want to send out a search party for her."

Leaving the sight of Byakuren's quiet, gasping face in the back of his mind as he turned around to face the forest outside, Alex hung his shoulders and began moving forward one dragging step at a time.

" _Crash!"_

A hard object collided and broke upon the back of his head, which caused his soul shield to protect him. Shards of white porcelain glass fell upon his shoulders and slid to the ground as he froze in place and slowly swiveled his head back. Two more objects, now identifiable as plates, were thrown into his face by Futo.

Biting her teeth with the ferocity of a tiger, she had to be quickly restrained under arms by Tojiko and Ichirin combined. They dragged her back but Futo kept kicking and flailing at Alex, screaming all the while.

"You murdered her! You murdered the Crown Prince in cold blood!" The tears from her face onto the ground alongside the spit she spewed in proclamations of anger, "Y-You don't feel a thing! You're a horrible, heartless monster!"

"That's enough Futo! The Crown Prince-" Tojiko's attempts at defusion only backfired as Futo's anger grew louder, "WHY ARE YOU DEFENDING HIM?!"

She then spun around to Ichirin and yelled at her, "AND WHY ARE YOU?!"

Fighting their restraints with all she had, Futo pointed a single finger at Alex as he hung his head to avoid their sight, "We...We let him into our homes...We gave him our things! A-And how does he repay us...?"

Futo hung her head against her chest and the tears rolled down her cheeks in tiny streams as the bitterness of her heart proved too overwhelming to ignore, "B-By taking away the person who inspired me the most..."

Alex felt his body tremble from the legs up to his waist. He bit his teeth together and whispered to Futo, "You need to be quiet already..."

"If you're truly sorry...Then bring her back!" Futo was able to stand strong on the front steps, as Ichirin and Tojiko's arms became as limp as jelly.

Alex repeated what he had already told himself, only this time aloud, "There's no way to turn back the clock for her..."

"Then what are you going to do?" Futo forced the question into Alex's face much like the plate she then threw straight at him. He winced as it collided with another soul shield, and continued to stare blankly at the girl as she threw plate after plate at him.

"How are you going to replace...the most precious thing in the world to me?!"

Each time glass broke, Alex's brows dipped further and further down, until eventually they reached their limit, and he raised them right back up and froze a plate in mid-air with an effortless thought. Then he spun it faster and slinged it right back at Futo's face.

A big, cloudy hand dropped down and squeezed it gently in its grasp. The hand was attached to a living cloud with an old man's face and a big, fluffy mustache. Normally this creature, known as a nyuudou, was a gentle giant...But now, he was glaring with the fury of the storm at his backside. He crushed the plate as he pulled his hand up, revealing Ichirin standing behind it with a golden hoop in each hand and her expression as stern as her cloudy friend.

"Futo's right. If you really were sorry for what you did, then you'd find a way to repent, not turn tail and run!" She bellowed with a heart full of bravery.

And she wasn't alone. One by one the other Youkai of Myouren Temple raised their heads up high and drew their weapons or signature items towards Alex. Byakuren widened her eyes and firmly put her foot down to exclaim, "Stop! This isn't the time to pick a fight!"

"Yeah. You better listen to your boss." Alex firmly agreed.

"Or what? You'll kill us all too?!" Murasa yelled with a vicious smirk.

Alex's eyes narrowed as he began to pull both his hands from his pockets and remark, "There are bigger things going on here than your grudge against me! Now lay down your arms!"

"Never! A remorseless monster like you doesn't deserve to exist in this world!" Shou exclaimed at the top of her lungs, a sensation that made her feel so alive even as her heart raced nervously against her chest.

Alex snapped his teeth together and growled for a few seconds as the stubbornness of the gathered Youkai was starting to irritate him, "Don't forget who your enemy is! Its Yukari Yakumo!"

"Maybe she is...But she sure as heck didn't kill a member of our family!" Nue proclaimed while floating with her trident sitting behind her back.

Byakuren was completely at a loss for words watching her followers stand so tall against this foe. It filled her heart with fear, and at the same time pride. A volatile mix of emotions for sure, as its confliction left her unable to move.

"You're right! She just did shit that's much MUCH worse!" Alex yelled while flailing his arms down.

"AAAAAAAAAAA!" Kyouko opened her mouth wide and let out a horrifying scream. The others hastily protected their ears, but Alex was not so lucky. He was blasted with a high decibel echo that his shields couldn't protect him from. His knees hobbled over a bit, and he could feel a bit of blood leaking from his left ear.

The yamabiko was still frightened, but she swallowed that fear like a wad of spit and gripped her broom tightly as she said, "W-We...We're not going to let you hurt anyone else!"

Alex took out some of the blood from his ear onto one fingertip and stared at it. Then he rubbed it out and turned that stare towards the others.

"Fine..." He growled heavily under his breath, "Then come and fight."

Kogasa, Nazrin and Shou, being the weakest physically of the bunch and having no special abilities to speak of, attacked Alex simultaneously with realistic Danmaku. Shou used her Jeweled Pagoda to gather the treasures from within the temple and increase the radiance and power of her curved lasers, which burned through the skies like blinking comets.

Alex dug his feet into the ground as one soul shield stood in perfect defense of this assault. He winced just a bit in annoyance and let them unleash their rage, for how futile it'd prove to be.

"Unzan! Hit him with everything you've got!" Ichirin requested while swinging her right fist towards Alex.

Unzan let out a deep, deep hum and expanded to the size of the temple. Then he wound up both his fists and thrust them out faster than missiles, pounding away at Alex's shield like a hammer of god. His feet budged a couple inches back after a hundred of those punches in conjunction with the Danmaku.

" _They can't do anything about my shields..."_ Realizing this brought Alex to pity their desperate attempts at fighting him.

But his glare didn't sag in the slightest, _"But this is their decision. And I will not hold back..."_

Alex swung his hands right up and caught Unzan's fists by the finger. He barely had a put the squeeze on them to keep them in place. He raised his brows and murmured, "That's right, you're a cloud spirit. So that'd mean..."

The cloudy material that encompassed Unzan's form began to get vacuumed into Alex's body through his palms, causing the panicked nyuudou to try tugging away in vain. He added more mass to his body, but that just made Alex pull him in faster.

"U-Unzan?!" Ichirin screamed as she swung her right hand up and watched the nyuudou looking down on her with a quiet whimper. He redirected his mass into a tiny hand extending down from his chin, and was inches away from reaching his friend's. But that goodbye was cruelly robbed by Alex finishing his absorbtion of the spirit's mass, which caused a spurt of fire to burn out from his body.

He closed his eyes and his heart started racing as he quietly murmured "Nine..." which set Ichirin's heart ablaze with rage.

"ARRGHHHH!" She flung across the temple grounds in a single, tearful leap and rammed her right ring towards Alex's face. He swung his eyes open and halted the ring an inch from his shield and bent it inward, coiling it around Ichirin's fist as she cried out in pain.

"You chose this fight. Don't forget that..." Alex then flicked his right hand up and with barely a care forced Ichirin's bound fist into her face and sent her hurtling across the ground. Her heels were ground up, where her weakened body then crashed against the foot of the stairs and the back of her head split open.

"...Ten." Alex remarked while hanging his head.

"I-Ichirin..." Byakuren quietly mumbled amidst her trance.

"You'll pay for that!" Murasa yelled while flying towards Alex alongside Nue, "Shou! Aim for the ground, then the shields!"

"Got it!" Shou raised the Jeweled Pagoda up higher, and the lasers fired off towards the ground. Thanks to the Pagoda's power, anything the lasers touched turned to jewels, so along with terraforming the ground she managed to splash Alex with the lasers' effect and encase the area around his body in gemstone.

"...Really now?" He murmured with slight curiosity.

Outside his line of sight, Nue threw a Seed of Unidentification onto the jewels and with some slight distorting they took upon the appearance of floating water. Alex narrows his eyes and shook his head, "Water? I already know this is fake."

"Yeah! But I see it as water..." Murasa swung her anchor down and took great pleasure in declaring, "And that's all that I need!"

Alex suddenly felt like his lungs were filling up with water and started gagging for air. He grabbed onto his neck with both hands while his vision was growing faint. Through the faintest traces of life his body endured, he focused upon the jewels along the ground below Murasa.

Self-assured in her victory, Murasa had her celebration and her life both tragically cut short when a jewel spike shot up from the ground and impaled her through the heart. This freed up Alex to regain his breath, where he then quickly punched the "water" with a gentle fist to shatter the jewels bound up in an illusion.

"...Eleven." He coldly murmured as he pulled the spike free with a thought and watched Murasa fall flat onto the ground.

Nue dove down and stabbed at Alex repeatedly with her trident, prompting him to mention, "Do you even know that Mamizou was killed by Yukari for being willing to help me?"

"Please, like I'd ever believe YOU!" Nue attacked faster in a rage while the Danmaku users kept on firing at him with a greater intensity.

Alex reached out between Nue's thrusts and grabbed her by the neck. He pulled her in to slam her against his shield full force, causing her to drop her trident and bleed from her face, "Believe me or not...Its the truth. And if she **was** alive to see you now...She'd be ashamed."

Alex left Nue with a jewel spike through the stomach and then threw her across the ground towards near Kyouko's feet. The yamabiko let out a frightened peep and then opened her mouth wide for another yell. After counting Nue amongst the dead on his hands, Alex swung his right hand up and forced the air Kyouko'd scream back into her lungs, causing them to burst.

Alex felt his heart wretch at the sight of her collapsing onto the ground, and thus quickly closed his eyes and murmured the number "Thirteen."

"Don't look away you monster!" Futo yelled before throwing a dozen plates at Alex to draw his attention towards her and Tojiko, who were combining their fire and lightning into an incredibly large and powerful sphere.

"Now! Stop thy cowardice and face this head-on!"

"Everyone..." Byakuren's body was twitching. The sight of death surrounding her, along with the survivors will to fight, was breaking the dour mood she found herself in.

Alex raised his right hand up high and remarked, "Here, let me help you."

He squeezed his hand shut and caused their sphere to collapse inward. Futo and Tojiko had but a second to look up in awe before the whole thing burst open, wiping out a large chunk of the temple and scorching alive anyone still standing and willing to fight.

Alex closed his eyes and dropped his arm to the hip with a heavy heart as he whispered, "...Eighteen."

"That's enough!" An explosion of raw power radiated out from the right of Alex, and the next second Byakuren was wailing on his soul shield with her skin covered in a multitude of rainbow colored runes.

Her fists pounded at him like lightning raining down from the very heavens, but was little more than a mild irritant for Alex. He grit his teeth and growled "You too?!" with great offense before swinging his right arm straight up and blowing Byakuren back with a heavy gust of wind.

She braced her arms before her face and then lowered them while catching her breath. Alex lowered his brows and shook his head as he tucked his hand into his pocket. Silent at first, he suddenly jerked his whole body forward and exclaimed, "What the hell is wrong with all of you?!"

He bit his teeth down and yelled, "Why are you all running headlong into death, huh?!"

Byakuren put her fists up and spoke through a ragged breath, "We...We'll all die one way or another. I...I saw Yukari's power firsthand."

"And so did I!" Alex slammed one hand against his chest and looked absolutely offended. He jerked his head away from the sight of the monk and scoffed, then coiled his hand into a fist and declared upon facing her once more, "Why the hell else do you think I'm doing this? Because I LIKE it?!"

"NO! Its because alone, we're nothing to her...But together, we can STOP her!" Alex's face turned a light shade of red as he raised his head up high and screamed, "All of you idiots are just playing into her hand by fighting me, don't you fucking get it?!"

Byakuren's eyes trembled and a cold sweat started to form on her tensing face.

"This could've been easy...But you people just had to go and make it difficult for all of us! Goddamn it! Don't-" His infernal rant seemed to have no end...Until all of a sudden something caused his soul shield to pop.

He widened his eyes and looked around. There was no one behind or in front of him besides Byakuren, but when he looked down he saw a small, distorting object lodged into his shield. The shield couldn't manifest its full protective properties, because it had no clue as to what was even threatening it.

"...What the?" He looked up and over to the left, where Nue was on her knees with barely the strength to stand. She grabbed onto her bleeding out gut with one arm and let the other one plummet away from her smugly satisfied grin.

"W-Will you shut up already...You damn hypocrite? The only one...making things difficult...I-Is you...Ghhcck!" Blood spat up from her throat and onto the ground, with her eyelids beginning their deathly sag.

"...Go get 'em for all of us...H-Hijiri...And...T-Thanks for taking someone like me in..." Nue collapsed flat onto her face before she was done.

A shock rumbled through Byakuren's heart and forced her to cry. She turned and hung her head, the shadow cast by her hair obscuring all but the tears rolling down her face. Alex began grabbing for the strange object on his shield while dryly commenting, "...I respected their will to fight, even if it was pointless. But this could have been averted."

"...Myouren..."

Alex raised his head and found Byakuren squeezing her fists and spreading her legs along the ground.

"Shou, Ichirin, Unzan, Kyouko, Murasa, Nue, Nazrin, Kogasa, Futo, Tojiko..." The back of her hair started to rise like a cape in the wind, while the ground cracked apart into a small crater beneath her feet.

" _What on Earth is she doing...?"_ Alex felt goosebumps rise along his arms and legs and without realizing it, he tried to hasten the removal of the unidentified object. But as he worked to no avail, the power he felt was growing beyond his ability to ignore it.

The runes around Byakuren's body shone brighter than the sun in the morning and began to raise off of her skin. With a tight scowl and hardened body, the monk murmured three more names with increasing, tearful agony, "Mamizou, Kokoro...Miko..."

" _Thank you...for everything..."_

" _And...I'm sorry I wasn't stronger..."_

Alex froze up and reeled his head back as Byakuren's runes shattered like glass. An ember of neon light, much like the flames of Alex's ultimate technique, flickered before the monk's heart, only to then burnout and consume her whole body like an inferno.

All that remained of Byakuren's presence was the hollow glare of her violet eyes amidst the flames, which burned straight through Alex's body as she was poised to strike. Before he could blink, she had smashed the ground up in her wake and stampeded towards him with a hurricane blowing aside any further debris.

Alex bit his teeth down. That was the most he felt he could do in that time. For he was no longer dealing with Byakuren Hijiri, the disciplined Superhuman Buddhist. No, he was not even dealing with a Superhuman. Those runes had been her chains, keeping her within reasonably mortal limits. And now with the strength of her love, and her rage, she broke through her restraints and became something even greater...

 **THE BURNING PRIESTESS OF PASSION:** _ **BEYOND SUPERHUMAN BYAKUREN HIJIRI**_

"Shi-!" Before he could even get a word out edgewise Byakuren had already hammered her fist into his chest.

Alex was thrown far off his feet and blown through approximately a dozen trees, all of whom went flying hundreds of feet into the sky. His body was now bent in a crooked "c" shape with his ribs feeling as comparatively brittle as crackers.

Byakuren blazed a trail through the destruction she made in a couple seconds to clobber Alex in the waist and nail him to the ground with her bloody knuckles. Her body was a fireball of continuously releasing energy. Too strong to be put out, too bright to be ignored.

She continued to uproot the trees in her wake with Alex's head, with him unable to go anything about it but grin and bear it. He had barely managed to push his eyes open before she propelled off him and swiftly landed on the ground with a sweeping upward kick, blowing him dozens of feet into the air with an earth quaking shockwave.

She vaulted all the way back to the trees that were still flying in the air and flung them like they were as light as twigs, hopping off to another one the moment one was tossed. They smashed and broke apart against Alex's body, spinning him around and around and riddling his skin with splinters.

Byakuren rode the last tree personally and grabbed onto Alex's shoulders the exact moment it shattered. She drove her feet into his chest and put everything she had into propelling off and sending him hurtling to the ground right outside the Human Village.

Skidding along the ground drew blood from his roughened back and wings, upon which Byakuren worsened the pain by crashing to the ground, picking him up by the neck, and ramming him against the village perimeter. The cracks broke out to the far corners of the wall, and the impact point broke apart and frightened the villagers nearby.

Byakuren squeezed tight to the point of suffocating Alex, forcing him to gasp for air while his eyes and face turned white. She wore that menacing stare, boring in deep for any sign of the boy's guilt. But all that she'd find was his panic and fear. The guilt lied all in his heart, which sank heavier than an anchor weighed from its ship.

She jerked back and threw him back into the forest, where his shoulder smashed apart a tree halfway through. Byakuren snagged the top half out of the air and rammed it down upon Alex's face, drawing a small puddle of blood from his nose and causing him to accidentally inhale the splinters as he gasped for air.

As his insides were ripped away at from those miniscules nuisances, Byakuren ran alongside him and pummeled his body with alternating left and right hooks. The strength of his rib cage was starting to fail him, and it wasn't long before his mouth joined his nose in expunging blood.

Byakuren planted a hand firmly on his chest and sent a shockwave throughout his body, briefly numbing his heart. Then she used her monsterous strength to pile drive his weakened body deep into the dirt. Dirt went flying high up in a wave and also wound up lodged inside of Alex's bloody wounds, enflaring the pain that was already ridiculous for any normal human to be expected to endure.

Byakuren let go only to deliver a firm sweeping kick to the top of his legs, which disabled their ability to move by breaking the bones. Alex continued to grit his teeth throughout this whole ordeal, waiting for his opportunity to strike. But there was no hope of that. She simply outclassed him in speed.

He was of two minds on this. On one hand, he deserved this pain for robbing her of her followers and family. On the other hand, yet again another figurehead of Gensokyo was wasting this incredible strength and determination on him and not Yukari. If he were to go out like this, it would be such an incredible insult, and no doubt Yukari would laugh about it until the end of days.

After breaking his legs, Byakuren proceeded to keep breaking his spirit. She drove her feet into the ground and resulting shockwave launched Alex high into the air. She pursued after him and punched right across his body like a rocket.

Then she turned around and punched right across him again in the same direction. Then again. Then again. Then once more for good measure. Eventually she had to stop because of the Hakurei Barrier getting in the way, and decided to punch him twice as hard in the opposite direction.

Midway towards the ground, Byakuren intercepted him with a punch squarely in his chest. His body became disheveled around her fist, and if his rib cage wasn't broken, then it was now. His heart rippled and stopped for a brief moment, which at this point was a miracle that saved him from the immense pain spiraling out of control in his body.

Byakuren then flipped back and rolled her fists around in the air before her chest. Her body exploded with a single burst of heavenly light and with the visage of a lotus at her back she barelled into Alex's body multiple times from multiple directions in the span of a couple seconds.

She snapped his wings in two, broke his arms and twisted his right leg. And that was just the stuff that was the least painful to describe. By the time Byakuren had decided to end her assault, Alex was more a bleeding sack of flesh than a living being. But he still hung on with what little, crucial breath he had saved.

Byakuren narrowed her eyes through the flames and grabbed onto Alex's neck, dropping him straight to the ground outside her broken temple. She rammed him through the ground until his head was perched on the staircase, surrounded by the stench of blood he had helped to create.

His breath ragged his and heart heaving with a heavy thump each beat, Alex stared deep into Byakuren's eyes and saw both rage and an immense sadness. Any tears she now shed were burned up by her power in an instant, leaving only anger to carry on the weight of her fight.

She reeled her right fist back and squeezed it until the blood ran dry. Alex held on with every gasp he spat in her face. He wanted her to drop that mighty hammer and pulverize his head into paste. His confident glare edged her to do so.

With her body trembling, that fist came crashing down...Just a few inches to the left of his face. The shockwave of her punch rippled out to the Myouren Temple and made the rest of it collapse into a pitiful heap. Alex widened his eyes and his gasps came out faster with a tiny bit of excitement in each one.

Byakuren's trembles worsened, and Alex knew **exactly** why it was. With a shame only he could understand, he tiredly whispered into her ears, "Even after every other oath you broke as a Buddhist...You...You couldn't bring yourself to take my life."

"..." Byakuren's eyes began to close, and her body drew closer towards Alex. The energy surrounding her flickered out of sight, and all that was left was a woman with deeply wrinkled skin and dried up colorless hair. She laid out flat atop of Alex's left arm, and the way she was positioned led him to finding out that she no longer had a heartbeat.

"...She pushed herself beyond her limits," Alex groaned as she looked towards the sky, "And when you go that far, there's always a cost to pay..."

Another corpse. Another innocent life stolen. How many did that make now?

"Nineteen..." He whispered alone in the agony of the night, his broken body surrounded by a pile of corpses that he'd only be grateful to become a part of.

And it was only going to get worse, just like Miko said. There was no way possible that no one saw Byakuren's endeavor. She managed to prove to all of Gensokyo that he could bleed. That he could be broken. And from there, anyone who still had doubts about who to fight would more than likely choose the easier way out.

"Which means one way or another, more people are going to die..." Alex spoke raspily with dread.

"Ha...Hahaha..." Though it pained his heart, he gently laid his head back and broke down into laughter for a good half a minute.

Then he laid his head back down and pinched his lips together into an uneven smirk. With a shake of the head he asked, "Shina...What am I supposed to do now?"

 _Meanwhile, at the Hakurei Shrine..._

Reimu was still sitting on the porch looking out to the horizon. Marisa was with her off beside the steps, but now they were joined by a few faces new and familiar.

One was a gal with short blonde hair that had a red hand in it. She wears a light blue dress with long white sleeves and a long pink ribbon going round her neck and another around her waist. She carries a black spell book sealed by a lock under her right arm and had a few puppets floating around her. She is...

 **The Seven-Colored Puppeteer: Alice Margatroid**

Sitting to the right of Reimu was a girl even shorter than Marisa. She has mangled orange-brown hair with two slightly thick and twisted horns atop them, each wearing a nice blue ribbon. She preferred to walk around in a tattered pale pink blouse, a long purple and pink skirt, and three chain accessories around the belt. Obviously, she was an oni, and as such spent her current time drinking sake from a small gourd.

 **The Tiny Powerhouse of the Devas: Suika Ibuki**

And the last person was Patchouli, was in the midst of delivering a proposal to Reimu, "We are preparing particular measures to counteract the Phoenix of Destruction's powers. But Remi would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us, Hakurei."

"I told you I'm thinking about it, ok?" Reimu coldly brushed her off, much to Marisa's annoyance.

"This ain't the time to be thinking Reimu!" She bluntly blurted out while running in front of her friend's face and swinging her arm towards the horizon, "This is worse than an Incident! People are dying out there! We gotta act now or all of Gensokyo's gonna go up in flames!"

"I know that! I know that! Can you give me a break?!" Reimu flung her arms up with immense frustration and then planted her hands back on her lap.

Suika raised her gourd up to Marisa and said in a youthful, drunken voice, "Yeaaah...Just take a break and take a drink!"

"Not NOW Suika!" Marisa blurted. The oni retracted her offer with a shrug and cheerfully drank from the gourd, "More for me then!"

Marisa groaned and looked to Reimu, who was in the middle of pondering to herself, "...What if he's right though? Maybe we should be going after Yukari instead."

"Don't joke about that Reimu. Yukari's done some shady shit, but she's never gone and threatened the peace of Gensokyo like he has!"

"Hrrmm..."

"REIMU!" Marisa was on the verge of grabbing Reimu's shoulders and slapping her when Suika stamped and quaked the porch with one tiny foot.

"Now I'll need you to settle down there Marisa," She said with a bit more sagely attitude, "Reimu's got the right of it really."

Suika laid down on one arm and with bright red cheeks said, "Gotta think these things through. Rushing into matters is what got the Brain of the Moon killed after all."

"If we wait too long then Gensokyo's done for!"

"Reimu! Reimu! Reimu!" A tiny and chipper voice hollered from her feet.

"Huh?" Recognizing that voice immediately, Reimu looked down and saw Sukuna bouncing around with the Miracle Mallet in her hands.

"Oh its you. What do you want?" She said with a somewhat dismissive attitude.

"I want to help stop the bad person! If we use the Miracle Mallet's power, we can make him go 'Poof'!" She sugggested that with the most unassuming smile that it even eased Marisa's tension a little bit.

Smiling herself, the magician nodded her head and declared, "That's a great idea! Good work Sukuna!"

"Ehhh...you sure about that?" Suika said with a suspecting raise of the brows, "That thing's kinda cursed to twist the user's wishes against them y'know?"

"Quiet Suika!" Marisa barked out, then turned and pulled Sukuna off the ground with a smile, "All we gotta do is word the wish right and its bye-bye Phoenix of Destruction!"

"...I suppose its worth a shot," Patchouli sloppily shrugged her shoulders and remarked, "So first we have to fill the Miracle Mallet with magic?"

"Yeah! With the three of us putting our all into it, the Miracle Mallet'll do anything!" After Marisa's triumphant thumbs up, the three magicians funneled their magic into Sukuna's artifact until it was glowing bright and golden. Suika and Reimu watched on with varying interest, though the tiny oni was more concerned with filling her gullet with sake.

"Alright! Now I just gotta make the wish right?" Sukuna squeezed the mallet in her hands and her heart pounded like a tiny drum, "Iiii wish..."

"Wait wait wait. Word of warning. You'd be wasting the wish by directly targeting him. Trust me on this." Suika said while slyly raising her brows for a moment.

"Ummm...Ok!" Sukuna nodded her and squeezed her eyes shut to deeply concentrate, "Then I wiiiish..."

She swung the Miracle Mallet up high and exclaimed, "For something good to come and stop the Phoenix of Destruction for good!"

The Miracle Mallet released all its light in a bright and beautiful spark that lasted as brief as the blinking of all their eyes. Marisa looked up to the sky and muttered, "Uhhh...So where's the problem solver?"

Sukuna lowered the mallet and gave it a couple shakes, "Maybe its a delayed reaction?"

"Or maybe the mallet's just not strong enough to stop him?" Reimu remarked, letting out a deep sigh before standing up and making her way off the porch, "You shouldn't be putting your faith in miracles Marisa. Sometimes, you've just got to-"

Reimu suddenly clutched her chest and let out a raspy gasp. Her eyes trembled, and then her body fell right off the porch and landed face first in the dirt.

"...R-Reimu?!" Marisa rushed to her aid and picked her off the ground, going straight for the wrist and checking for the pulse.

"N-No...This..." Marisa's mouth became an uneven smirk, "This is a joke right?"

Sukuna clutched the Miracle Mallet to her chest and then threw it aside while leaping over to Reimu, who Marisa put on her back to keep her cradled underhand. Sukuna bounced on Reimu's chest and raised a ruckus that she knew she couldn't ignore, "C'mon Reimu! Its your good friend Sukuna! Get up and lets have some fun!"

Slowly over time the oomph of Sukuna's bounces lessened, and then she collapsed onto her knees and her eyes began wobbling, "R-Reimu its not funny anymore..."

Marisa stared at Reimu's closed eyes and kept gently shaking her body without a word. The rest of the folk gathered here were quiet about what was happening for a few seconds, until Patchouli decided to divert the attention away from the mournful scene by remarking, "I need...to let Remi know...And prepare ourselves for what's to come. Are you coming with Alice?"

The puppeteer nodded her head and the two flew on out of there, with Alice glancing back at Marisa for a brief moment. Suika then swung her gourd onto a chain and hauled it over shoulder as she leapt off the porch and crash-landed away from Reimu.

"...So that's that huh?" She picked up her feet and headed for the staircase. Marisa raised her head, bitterly bit her teeth, and grumbled out to her, "Where are you going?"

"...Where else?" Suika hung her head and with a smirk that diverted the steady flow of tears she shed she reached the staircase and remarked, "To war."

Marisa and Sukuna remained at Reimu's side, but they were not the only ones who mourned. Thunder and lightning roared throughout the sky, and rain began to fall all across Gensokyo in buckets. And then...the tiniest cracked started to form in the barrier behind the shrine...

It was the beginning...of the end. And all Marisa could wonder was..."Why?"

 _Next Time: To War_


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8: The Fall of Future**

After spending some time draining the remains of the Myouren Temple dry for energy to heal himself up, Alex wandered around a bit in Gensokyo planning his next move before ultimately deciding to head for the Youkai Mountain.

Eirin was dead, robbing him of a chance to seal Yukari away for good. Miko, Byakuren, Mamizou, and everyone who followed them were gone, depriving him of people he'd assume would be easy recruits. Like Miko said, the chances of him gaining further allies would diminish as the pile of bodies grew.

"...I have to keep trying. I have to keep trying..." A repetitious mantra guided his way forward as he ascended the mountainside nice and slow. Along the way, the cold winds grazed him with an ominous whisper. Something in Gensokyo had changed for the worst, he just didn't quite know what.

"I have to hurry..." But it did hasten his pace, allowing him to push right past the fog surrounding the mountain and arrive near the very top. Once he was close to the waterfalls' beginning he saw the clouds begin to stir with thunder, rain and lightning.

The lightning's pale flash cast gloomy shadows upon a very large group of Youkai assembled in front of the Moriya Shrine.

It was unbelieveable to behold for all the wrong reasons. A hundred winged Tengu took to the skies wielding short swords and ninjaesques dresses, their ebony feathered wings flapping to keep them afloat. Wolf tengu were positioned below them with pikes and shields, and were joined by ogres, gremlins, onis and other obscene creatures that crawled amongst the Underground. Finally, there were some Kappa standing around on the sides of the mountaintop.

And that was just the grunts. Alex could pick out more notable faces amongst the assembled crowd. The exaggerative reporter Aya Shameimaru, the reclusive reporter Hatate Himekaidou, the smarmy patroller Momiji Inubashiri, and the egotistical Nitori Kappashiro. They'd all been conscripted to this army that was being led by a surprisingly broad collection of folks.

There was a long-haired tengu wearing the red long-nosed mask commonly associated with their kind along with long, long heeled shoes. With her wild, knee-length mullet-like hair and lack of curves it wouldn't be hard to assume this person was a man. But regardless of that, they were clearly the Tenma, the leader of the Tengu.

Kanako and Suwako took front-and-center in the back row with Sanae sandwiched between them pumping herself up. They acted as the representatives of the entire mountain. But what really caught Alex by surprise was that Satori numbered their ranks, and both Rin AND Utsuho were allowed to be at her side. The two pets were itching for a fight, but Satori's calming presence held them at bay.

Alex instantly felt his brows drop from severe irritation. This many soldiers wouldn't be armed at this very moment unless they were planned to be used right away. He thus sighed and cut right to the chase, albeit with the slimmest hope that he'd be proved wrong, "This army for me or for Yukari, Kanako?!"

Kanako crossed her arms under her chest as the tassles of her shimenawa swayed in the wild wet breeze, "You already know the answer!"

"Then you'd better give a damn good reason why!" He yelled demandingly.

"If Yukari falls then so does Gensokyo. You know why I can't allow that!" Kanako yelled quite assuredly in her assertation.

" _Yukari must have gotten to her first...! Just like with Mamizou..."_ Though this lack of staying ahead of his enemies angered him to the core, he was more disappointed in the goddess for falling victim to such simple-witted lies, regardless of the reason why.

Thus in vain he tried to rip that veil of deception off from over her eyes, "You're being lied to! I killed Yukari once and Gensokyo was just fine!"

"Its her word against yours! Do you have any proof?!" She demanded back.

"You're putting too many lives at stake to be asking such questions!" Alex whipped his pointer finger at her through the crowd and exclaimed, "If you commit to this fight then there's no going back! Can you live with the consequences of your actrions, Kanako Yasaka?!"

Tenma brushed Kanako aside with her feathery fan and then thrust it down towards Alex, bellowing in a deep and commanding voice, "We were blessed to survive one Godslayer! We shall not tolerate the empty threats of another, lesser one!"

"Then why isn't SHE fighting..." Aya grumbled in annoyance.

"Hush, Shameimaru!" Hatate whispered.

Alex widened his eyes and leaned his head back, grabbing onto the side of his face and engaging in a bit of laughter, "Oh that's rich! Youkai live off of fear, and now you plan to die because of it!"

He leaned his eyes into view and his curt glare shook the wimpier tengu at their knees, "Cause that's the only way this'll proceed now. You let the beast out of the cage, now you'll NEVER be able to put it back in."

"Then if it removes your blight from this world forever, it shall be a death worthy of the tengu name!" Tenma hollered victoriously.

"Whose name we talking about exactly? Cause it sure as heck ain't gonna be ours..." Aya's eyes shifted in search of a way out, but Tenma's stone cold glare iced her spine and kept her in place.

"And what about you two?! Sanae! Satori!" Alex's attempt to single them out only earned silence from Satori and a bold, proud proclamation from the shrine maiden, "I'll stop you because its the right thing to do! Reimu'd do the same thing if she was in my shoes!"

"...Would she now?" Alex pondered, a jab towards Reimu's surprising lack of presence in this matter. Then he swung his right arm straight up and out and exclaimed, "Fine! Come at me! All of you! I'll take you all on!"

He started to reach for his triggers when the slightest twitch of his fingers was enough to make Tenma proclaim, "Front line! Do not give him the chance to transform!"

Three tengu pushed away from the crowd and sped straight for Alex, too fast for him to transform in time. He grinned and popped his sword away while thinking _"Hmph, perhaps I'll just preserve my strength..."_ as he squeezed his hand into a fist.

One tengu went just that little bit faster in order to make the first attack with a blinding slice down at Alex's face. He swerved out of the way and batted the arm with the back of his left hand to keep the blade from his shoulder, then he thrust his fist straight into the tengu's gut to make them immediately cobble over in pain.

The other two tengu came charging from his sides ready to stab into his hips. So in retaliation, Alex grabbed onto the shoulders of the stunned tengu and vaulted over it, using their body to take the stabs for him. The shock of immense pain penetrating its sides caused the tengu to die immediately.

After stabbing their comrade by accident the tengu withdrew their bloody blades and watched them plummet shamefully from the sky. Alex moved to attack them both during this moment of grief, only to be met with a sharp, paralyzing pain treading heavily up his spine.

Once, twice, then three times this feeling struck before he was able to look back and notice a set of pikes impaled into his backside, with the wolf tengu preparing to throw more.

Alex pushed the pikes out with a thought and grunted at the flaring pain. He then spun around, snatched two pikes out of the air as they flew towards him, and then twirled and thrust them behind to stab through the tengus' guts.

"Ceasefire!" Tenma yelled to the wolves, who stamped the bottom of their pikes on the ground in near perfect unison and became unmoving statues. Tenma then slowly swiveled her head left and glared through her mask at Satori, who murmured with mild disappointment, "Then I suppose its my turn? You may want to lower the hostilities, Tenma."

Though unused to using such a tone, Satori seized her title as one of the commanders of this army and bellowed with surprising authority, "Underground troops! Take aim with your weapons and show no mercy! Avoid the tengu if possible!"

A widespread mild hypnosis from her would ensure greater success for the thick-headed party lovers. After snatching their odd, liquid dripping knives from their buckets and flung them like darts towards Alex.

"Heh...!" Alex grinned and finally ripped the pikes free from the tengu, then used their incredible reach to swipe away at the knives zipping by him like flies.

" _Even a fairy would know that those knives were dipped with poison."_ He lauded their efforts.

"Frontline! Keep him occupied!" At the Tenma's command, multiple tengu flew bravely into battle.

One sped past his pikes and managed to use the blunt edge of their sword to knock one out. But upon overextending to try and stab his heart, Alex beat them to the punch by using the other pike he had. He then used her as a meat shield to take a few knives before flinging her to the wolves.

Two tengu ambushed his sides and cut along the back of his arms to slow him down as they then went for his hips. Alex wrapped his arms around their wrists and thrust their hands up to force their swords out of their hands. Then when they descended back in front of him, he grabbed and stabbed them right into their necks.

" _This'll take forever...And they're definitely looking to stall for time..."_ Wising up to the enemy's tricks, Alex kicked his right foot into a tengu's gut as they charged in and begun looking around.

There wasn't much time to work with, so he looked at one of the lower plateaus the wolves were gathered upon and was hit with a literal spark of inspiration. He forced millions of volts into the tengu through his foot and kicked them at the bottom of the stone formation the wolves stood upon.

"Brave yourselves!" One yelped as they raised their shields in futility. The tengu collided, and the ground they stood upon broke and collapsed, sending the whole platoon tumbling into the waterfall.

"He's starting to use his elements..." Kanako murmured while her taut fingers twitched upon the gripping of her elbows.

"Show no mercy! He cannot be allowed to live!" Tenma screeched in vengeful delight, and whether her citizens wished to fight or not, they had already been trapped between this rock and hard place.

Alex started rapidly flinging fireballs into the crowd for the tengu to cut down and cover themselves in smoke with. He then summoned his blade and flung into the smoke, immediately cutting down the chest of one tengu hard enough to force their deathly descent.

Four tengus surrounded him with a simultaneous attack, only to be repelled with a vicious circular slash, a second of which was enough to cut them all down. As their blood splashed upon his skin he began to shiver, and whatever joy that had driven him thus far was starting to leave.

" _This isn't right...I shouldn't be fighting this battle..."_ Though most of his blame was directed towards the ones leading this army.

That moment where he was distracted allowed a lucky Undergrounder to connect with a knife across his legs. Instantly revulsion plagued his gut and his nerves felt dry and itchy.

"This...isn't poison!" Alex dreaded that it was something far, far worse, a sentiment that Satori was more than happy to elaborate upon.

"Its concentrated illness, courtesy of that spider girl Yamame." She said with a whisper.

"Heh!" Tenma boasted in delight, "Even a god can fall ill it seems!"

She brandished her hand to the wind and proclaimed, "Now's the time to strike!"

More tengu were ready and raring to fight with their hearts fueled by a drive to avenge their fallen friends. Alex's vision blurred and as he grumbled "Shit..." they attacked him down the chest with three quick cuts in succession. The bleeding made the fever worsen, and delayed his ability to react.

" _Got to...get rid of this...!"_ As the illness infiltrated his body in liquid form, Alex knew that the best way to expunge it would be to sweat it all out. While he made that body endure such an arduous process, he grabbed tightly onto his blade and wildly swung it around while it was on fire. The tengu were forced to keep their distance after a couple of their comrades fell victim to his vicious flailing.

"Stand back. I got this." Aya boasted with her head held high as she used her own feathery fan to blow out the flames with a single powerful gust, while also forcing Alex to brace himself.

But the tengu didn't need to fear such vicious winds. They could simply charge right in and drive their blades through Alex's body. Four of them piled on him at once, with the piercing blow to his heart foiled by him wedging his arm in between the blade and his chest.

"Ha...ha...ha..." Sweating out the illess was exhausting enough. But these stabs made his heart race at a fatalistic beat.

" _Why...why am I hesitating...Its not like this is a game...T-They are trying to kill me..."_ And upon reaching this harsh conclusion about the reality of this battle, a voice in his head whispered, _"Don't you forget...Its kill..."_

"Or be killed..." He groaned through an agonized breath. Then as his heartrate began to slow in conjunction with his deeper breathing, he slowly raised his head and panted out raggedly with his irises now red.

The tengu that had assaulted them would experience the fear from his glare for but a moment, as he quickly unleashed the fury of lightning upon their wettened bodies to fry them alive. Then he rushed straight to the right and smashed another Tengu in the chest, breaking their ribs and launching them into another tengu, the two winding up colliding into the side of the mountain.

He then jerked his head back and glared straight at Aya, who drew her sword and muttered under a grimace, "Oh great, why'd it have to be me next?"

When Alex punched out towards her she blocked the attack by holding up the blunt edge of her blade and holding completely still. Alex blinked a couple times while the sly tengu grinned and stuck her nose up, "Just kidding!"

She swerved her blade and cut the space between the boy's knuckles before leaning down and ramming into him at supersonic speeds to propel him back. Alex dug his feet into the air and lunged back at Aya, who had already went flying in for another attack.

He swung his right hand down with fire dragged along via his fingertips, and Aya zipped behind him and punctured his backside twice with her sword moving through as quick as a hot knife through butter. Alex turned around on the dime and rammed an uppercut into the tengu's gut, only for her to bite her teeth down and endure the blow.

"Hmph, I guess you're a little better than the rest..." Alex muttered that faint praise and then whipped his sword out on the defensive as Aya hastily tried to cut through his arm.

Aya then switched to her other hand and swung her fan up to catch Alex in a rising gale of wind blades. He pushed the blades aside with a thought until the tengu rose after him and twirled her blade around to repeatedly cut into his chest. Then she lashed her fan out and blew Alex away with a rough hurricane gale that her fellow tengu had to brace themselves against.

"Shameimaru! Watch what you're doing!" Tenma proclaimed as even she felt the winds tickle her body.

"Oh bite your tongue already old hag! I'm not going to be fodder for your glory!" Aya dove straight after Alex and impaled her blade deep into his chest, pinning him right in the middle of the cold, rushing waterfall.

"Any last words?" She taunted while pressing her other hand atop the palm holding the blade in, preparing to make the miniscule budge to cut into his heart.

"..." As the water drenched his face and hair with a shivering cold touch, a grin widened around Alex's face as his panting slowed to a crawl, "Thanks, I needed the refresher."

Aya's heart skipped a beat and she immediately shifted the blade to the right. But her steel was met with a rough resistance, as Alex had hardened the skin around the wound to be tougher than steel. And the second later he forced the blade out of his body and began setting his body on fire.

When hot and cold collided, a very heavy veil of fog covered the entire battlefield in seconds. Aya went for her fan and tried to swing it out, only for a series of rupturing shockwaves to blow aside the fog for her. The sounds accompanying them reminded Aya of towering oaks falling to the ground, only with a more gruesome "Snap!"

Upon turning around to brave the sounds she was accosted by a powerful white flash of lightning that hid many of her comrades in shadows. When the light subsided she was greeted by a floating field of corpses that had their heads forcibly twisted to the right and left by a single punch each. And the perpetrator, Alex, was now resting high above them with his hands dragging down the lightning from the heavens into his grasp.

Upon flashing a smirk he thrust his hands down and bombed the entire battalion of wolves and Underground soldiers with stray lightning bolts, and fried many other tengu who happened to be in his path. Aya sped around, hoping her luck would be her saving grace. That was the last thought she'd spare before running face first into a lightning bolt.

By the time Alex was finished his palms were thick with smoke and there was less than twenty tengu remaining. The Underground forces had been mostly wiped out, and they were scared. Scared and shivering. Alex saw no more reason to play around with the grunts now, and shifted his full attention upon the leaders.

Kanako braced her teeth into a grin and dug her fingertips into her elbows before muttering hesitantly, "Sanae...Its time."

"A-Are you sure Lady-"

"This isn't the time for doubts. We'll be fine. As long as we stick to the plan, I know we can prevail." Kanako gave an uneven smile to her shrine maiden for a moment, then turned to Satori.

"I know," She responded right away and looked down at the devastated battlefield, "Everyone! Retreat Underground to safety!"

As the shambles of that faction made haste for the surface, the remaining tengu sought to do the same regardless of their leader proclaiming, "Cowards! Who said you could run?!"

Tenma snarled her teeth and reached down to her right hip, where a sword was kept sheathed in chains. Kanako gleamed at her and felt mild discomfort as the blade was drawn with a vile aura surrounding it, "You'd better not be considering using that."

"What other choice has he left me, Yasaka?!" Tenma ripped the gruesome, blood-soaked blade free and raised it to the sky, where its hollow darkness devoured the light flashing down from above and began to swallow in spectres that suddenly manifested across the battlefield.

"The legendary soul stealer Muramasa shall feed upon the fallen's souls, and with its power I WILL slay you in a single stroke, Elemental Overlord!"

When the demonic blade had feasted its fill Tenma squeezed it in her hand and flew straight towards Alex, raising the blade high above her head. Floating there, without a hint of movement to his name, Alex caught the Tengu leader unawares by suddenly having his blade thrusted through her stomach and suspending her in place gasping for air.

He then tossed her aside without a care and raised his blade up in front of his chest. Kanako pleaded with a yell, "Hurry Sanae!"

Sanae squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands together for a concentrated prayer as she whimpered, "O-Ok!"

Sanae's body then began to glow as both Suwako and Kanako closed their eyes. Alex reached for the triggers of his sword while Satori gripped her Third Eye and glanced back to her pets one at a time, "Get ready to move on my signal."

With their steadfast nods assuring her just a little, Satori turned towards the mountainsides and saw the Kappas finally making their move. With Nitori giving the orders, they began to open up the ground and raise a pair of machines with a laser cannon mounted on top.

"A-Are you sure this'll work Nitori?" A short-haired Kappa with glasses murmured.

"Against Mr. Sucks at Throwing Games? Hahaha! I'd say our odds of victory stand at 110%!" She triumphantly stood atop her laser cannon and thrust a wrench towards the boy, who exploded quickly and violently with golden flames, knocked her straight off her perch from the raging hot winds.

Alex spread his wings out of the flames and stared down his opponents. But he noticed that Suwako and Kanako had vanished, and in their place Sanae now hovered with her hair glowing a bright aquamarine and her body radiating with a bright heavenly light. With poise and a confident posture she gently raised her gohei towards Alex and hadn't a trace of malice to her name.

"This technique...Its just like what Yorihime used to do." Alex grumbled with a bit of surprise in his voice.

"That's right!" Sanae reciprocated his comment with an echoing voice combining hers, Kanako and Suwako's into one, "But as a natural born living god, I can handle the power of more than one goddess at a time! Lady Kanako...and Lady Suwako...Have given me the strength to stop you in your tracks Alex!"

" _She's not spewing bullshit. Her power's increased quite a lot. And with those two's powers, that means she can match most of my elements."_ Alex still kept grinning as he hollered out to his opponent, "But it makes no difference! You can't even touch me!"

He ran forward faster than a speeding bullet and Sanae simply raised her gohei forward and summoned a five-pronged star barrier to absorb the full brunt of his attack and repel the flames that sparked from his blade grinding down against the barrier.

Sanae opened her hand against the barrier and pushed Alex back with a powerful gale that he quickly cancelled out with one of his own. As her barrier dispersed she glided her gohei along the air and summoned a few more stars to fly towards Alex at near lightspeed.

Alex swung his body around to evade them, their harrowing close connection to him catching him by surprise. He then flung himself over Sanae and spun upside-down, throwing out a few small electrified circles that unleashed crackling lightning down upon her.

She kept cool and summoned her own lightning to evenly match his, then twirled back in the nick of time to use her gohei to block his charging slash. But his strength overwhelmed and pushed her back, with the heat of his blade blustering against her body.

As Alex raised his blade for another attack, Sanae held her left hand out and yelled "Halt!" as a star manifested around Alex's wrist and locked his arm into place between its intersecting lines. Alex jerked his arm down and received a shock to his elbow joints for the effort.

"What...?" He was surprised, as for with his soul shields at his side that little shackle shouldn't be stopping him.

"You still have to obey the laws of motion. Even with your shields!" Sanae proclaimed.

"You think I don't know that?!" Alex growled in response, feeling much like a child that's been reprimanded repeatedly by a teacher.

He then immediately swung his other hand over and grabbed onto the star to tear it off. Sanae swung her gohei in a circle around her body and summoned the wind to coalesce into a tornado that she set upon him with a thrust of the hand.

Alex braced himself in the eye of the storm and lunged forward like an arrow, but Sanae fled back right before his sword came down upon her. She then swiped her gohei out twice and peppered his shielded body with waves of tiny stars. She then floated higher and threw a very hot fireball down, then threw a hefty amount of oil at it to create a hefty enough explosion to force Alex back.

This stalled him out long enough for his first shield to drop. Sanae followed up on this success by surrounding Alex with a sphere of stars that fired lasers from their centers. Alex leapt and twirled his body around to try and squeeze between them, but one managed to slip on by and graze his body to bait out the second of his shields.

He grit his teeth and bolted at Sanae, trying to force her on the offensive to keep up the shield's longevity. A dunderhead though she may be, when the chips were down she could be relied upon to remain headstrong in battle. And do so she did.

Without losing her focus she swiped her gohei in front of herself and briefly turned her body into mist, where Alex harmlessly passed on through. He swerved his head around in surprise then turned back and watched Sanae playfully stick her tongue out at him.

Alex unamusingly crossed his arms and tapped his toes on the empty air. Sanae took the prime opportunity to sandwich him between two large stars and funnel tons of godly energy into the farm of a massive beam from each. Alex flew out of their range by ramming shoulder first into Sanae.

He then electrically charged his arm and lashed it out, zapping her whole body as she was flung back. She shook off the high voltage with a shake of the head and quickly raised her gohei to bind Alex's left hand in place. Then when he tried to remove it, she swished her hand to the left and made him punch himself in the face, an act that defied the shields' ability to protect him.

After being clobbered in the face twice more Alex gained the willpower to break free and rip the star binding off. Though now he had a bit of blood dripping out of his nose. He rubbed the blood onto his gloved hand and squeezed it in place on his palm, then started pounding the air with his fists to send bullets of compressed wind into Sanae.

Enduring a couple of those was all she needed to muster up another of those barriers. But when that arrived Alex aggressively charged at it and smashed his right fist into its center full force. A crack formed in it, and when Alex punched at it with a left hook the whole barrier came crashing down. Though Sanae didn't appear too affected by its destruction, her eyes nevertheless widened for a moment.

She then attacked with a flurry of stars to bait out his third shield. When Alex came charging in she turned her body into mist and spun around, swinging her gohei out towards the shrine's lake. A couple onibashira were pulled up and pointed at him, then sent flying with a whisk of her hand.

Alex drew his sword and cut them down through the center like they were as weak as wooden sticks, even knowing he was purposefully falling into the shrine maiden's trap. Sanae spun two of those halves around above him and repeatedly clapped them against his body. The loud banging noise hurt more than anything else, and forced him to plug his ears.

But as Sanae kept at it for a few more seconds, Alex's eyes were drawn to the Kappas hard at work on their laser cannons. He raised his lower lip and hummed with growing irritation and curiosity. Then Nitori pulled out a large vial of the Anti-Genesis Theorem and waggled it around between her fingertips, and Alex's eyes flared wide open.

" _Not this shit again!"_

His thoughts resonated with Satori, who widened her eyes and cautiously proclaimed, "Sanae, he's onto the plan!"

Sanae immediately bit her teeth, dropped the onibashira, and swung her gohei up to bind both of Alex's wrists above his head when he attempted to call down the lightning. Nitori then inserted the vial into a part of the machine, and Alex's body flared up violently with rage.

"It ain't happening you slimy little gremlins!" He roared from the depths of his throat while tugging down at his bindings.

"Oh..." Nitori smugly grinned and hovered her finger over the big red button for a moment, "Its happening."

She pressed it down with great enthusiasm and the conductor of the laser began to flare up with flashing red lights and violet sparks. The Kappas ran out of the way and Nitori eagerly rubbed her hands together as both cannons were primed to fire.

Alex's arms pulsated and throbbed as he dredged up all his strength to the surface and tore straight through the bindings the very second the cannons each unleashed a crimson bolt of pure Theorem energy. He zipped away and the two forces collided, forming a sphere that'd be the perfect size to contain him.

Nitori let out a raspy "Tsk" and ran over to the cannon to shut it off while foolheartedly declaring, "Guess we'll have to try again..."

Alex spun towards her direction biting his lower lip and scowling with flared nostrils, "You're dead Kappa!"

Sanae flew in right his way and summoned a barrier that he rammed straight into on his warpath towards Nitori. Satori raised her right hand up and waved her fingers forward while remarking, "Okuu. Orin. Its your turn now. Stick to the plan."

"Absolutely Lady Satori!" They both cheerfully barked and then flew off cuddling side-by-side with a ferocious look in their eyes.

Satori closed her eyes and focused the hypnotic power of her Third Eye onto Utsuho. The hell raven felt a bit fuzzy in the brain at first, but then with a hardened smile she made a hard stop off to the left of Alex and raised her control rod.

Pure nuclear flames fired from the center in a condensed form, that level of control maintained thanks to Satori's mild hypnotism. In that condensed state even Alex was forced back when it collided with his body and called his fourth soul shield to his aid.

Alex flared his eyes open and pressed against the flames one step at a time, like he was trudging through thick swamp muck. But while he was busy dealing with Utsuho, Rin slyly ran up to his side and ran her claw along his shield while saying in a playfully coercing voice, "Open wide! Wakey wakey!"

A split suddenly opened up in his shield and the nuclear flames forced themselves through into his chest. The blistering heat made him bare a scowl until he could direct all his power into that part of his body to fend it off. Then he was just left wondering what the hell just happened as he thrust his left hand up and tried to fry Rin with lightning, who cheekily grinned before turning into her cat form to slip away unharmed.

" _Her power is to control spirits..."_ He reminded himself with much irritation at this fact, "Its a real pain in the ass keeping track of who has what powers you know!"

But whatever. It was just a mild inconvenience, right? Well after Rin had worked her magic, she got a safe distance away next to Utsuho and summoned a bunch of blue-ish ghouls, known as vengeful spirits, to throw at Alex.

"Go get 'em ghoulies!" She proclaimed excitedly like a child as they heeded her call and rammed through Alex's body one after the other. His innards, not in a physical but spiritual sense, became very, very hot. It was a hard sensation to describe. Think of it like putting boiling hot water into a blender. Eventually, the heat will burn its way through.

And it hurt Alex more than it would most, seeing how he has other spirits already inhabiting his body that were now reacting negatively to the vengeful touch. The shields protecting him phased away entirely, and thanks to that Sanae quickly used her enhanced divine power to shackle Alex's wrists and ankles with stars.

Utsuho kept pouring on the power, pushing Alex ever closer to the center point between both laser cannons. Nitori grinned as wide as a jackal and stamped one finger down upon the big red button, "Alright! Lets do this right this time!"

The cannons charged up for another blast. Alex reared his head back and screamed at the top of his lungs towards the clouds in the sky. At his beck and call, thunder rumbled throughout all of Gensokyo and the clouds burst with light. Lightning then began bolting down all over, ripping through the front of the laser cannons and making the Kappas dive to the ground for safety. Sanae retreated and defended with a barrier, while Rin pushed Utsuho out of the way. Satori was fine just floating in place, luckily.

Nitori got up first and ran straight for her machine, getting in dangerously close to the scarred wiring and grumbling, "Well LUCKILY the damage isn't too bad...But its going to take some time to repair this."

She whipped out her wrench and dug into the scar while proclaiming without a care, "Hey! Stall him for a bit! We've got enough juice for another shot!"

"E-Easier said than done..." Sanae remarked as Alex broke free from his shackles and rubbed his sore wrists with a tight grip. He then squeezed his gloved hand into a taut fist and glared straight at her with burning red irises, scanning along the battlefield to leave none out of his sight.

"I...will NEVER be caged like that again. Never...ever...AGAIN!" At the very moment he roared that out, the skyline behind the Moriya Shrine began to crack.

Rin remarked with dry enthusiasm, "Umm...T-That wasn't his doing was it?"

When even he looked over his shoulder at the crack, Sanae shook her head and murmured, "No...No I don't think it was."

Alex stared at the cracks for a while and understood the meaning behind them much faster than the others. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped in absolute disbelief as he murmured, "You gotta be kidding me...There's seriously no way Yukari would go this far to deal with me..."

After a mildly unhinged chuckle he turned his head back and remarked, "Looks like time's running out...For all of us."

"What?" Sanae was genuinely oblivious and tilted her head.

Pulling back on his right fist and setting it ablaze, Alex proclaimed, "Sorry, but change of plans. I have to hurry it up now...So its time you got out of my way!"

He charged straight towards Sanae while she was stunned.

"Hi there!" Suddenly he was interrupted by a very cheerful sounding person who dropped right in front of his face hanging upside-down loosely in the air.

Grinning from cheek-to-cheek was this wavy green haired satori with dark green eyes, a black hat with a yellow ribbon that somehow remained perch on her head, and a yellow shirt and green skirt that was strikingly similar to Satori's own. Unlike Satori, this strange, goofy looking girl had a closed Third Eye.

"What in the world...?" He was so completely taken aback that this was all he could say or do.

"Koishi...?" Satori murmured with a melancholic familiarity.

The grinning girl turned clockwise like the hands of a clock until she was standing upright before Alex and giddily smiling inches from his face, "I saw you playing and having fun! So I'm gonna play too!"

 **The Unconscious Wandering Innocence: Koishi Komeiji**

Her presence, unexpected though it was, may just very well be the factor necessary to turn the tides for the Moriya and Underground coalition...

 _Next Time: Paranoia Strikes Near_


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9: The Fall of Mind**

Alex floated there, his eyes blinking in disbelief all on their own as he stared deep into the wandering eyes of the satori Koishi. She blinked at him back, almost like a mirror with a delay. While he remained enamored by the confusion her presence brought, Sanae shook her head and remarked aloud, "This is our chance!"

"Wait!" Satori suddenly shouted before turning to her wayward sister and exclaiming, "Koishi! You need to get out of here! Its too dangerous!"

Koishi creaked her head to the right and continued to smile in the same doll-like fashion as she responded, "Hi sister! Did you come to play too?!"

When Koishi's eyes were off Alex, he firmly blinked his shut and quickly shook his head while muttering, "What the hell...?"

Once he raised his sword upon Koishi, Satori could feel her heart grow faint. But there was little cause for concern, as Alex merely used his blade as a tool to try and help Koishi acclimate and understand what was going down, "You have no reason to be here. Leave. _Now._ "

Koishi leaned back and slowly floated towards an upside-down position, only stopping partway through to knock on Alex's forehead a couple times with her fist, most notably NOT causing his soul shield to pop up.

"Knock knock, who's there?" She giggled like a child.

Alex slanted his brows all the way down and dropped his sword, grabbing tightly onto Koishi's extended wrist and flinging her away overhead as she went hollering gleefully into the distance. He then paused and shook his head some more, as his mind felt strangely empty all of a sudden.

"...That was weird," He muttered before drawing his sword upon Sanae and remarking, "Now...Where were we?"

His vision suddenly went pitch black, causing his heart to skip a beat as he felt cold skin pressed upon the front of his face. Then a familiar childish drawl spoke to him, "Peekaboo! Guess who?"

Alex's heart started to race as Koishi peeled apart her fingers and swung her head down into view with a giddy smile, "Its me! Koishi!"

He once again grabbed onto her wrists and threw her off of him towards Sanae. Then as she turned around with a hop, skip and a jump he swung a pointer finger at her and growled, "Seriously! This isn't the time for this! Get out of here!"

Koishi simply leaned back at Sanae and whispered into her ear like a gossiping schoolgirl, "This guy's got anger issues up the wazoo, don't he?"

"U-Ummm...Yes he does?" Sanae admitted with a tense smile.

Thus Koishi spread her arms across the air, stood on one foot, and said in a peppy tone, "Then I'll help you through them with tons of fun!"

Alex slanted his brows so much it was questionable if his eyes were even open anymore. He drew his sword, shook his head, and then looked at his surrounding opponents while grumbling, _"Forget her. She's just a nuisance..."_

He laid his eyes on Sanae past Koishi and then charged forth, his speed kicking up a wind that blew the wayward girl away. He swung his sword out and Sanae just narrowly erected a barrier to get in his way. Alex stood his ground and pounded the barrier with his blade again to crack it, then stabbed the blade through the center of the cracks to try and reach Sanae's face.

In a clever move on her part, Sanae used her bindings to keep the blade lodged inside of the barrier. Four bindings were sufficient to keep such a powerful blade in check while she flew away to safety. As Alex spent his strength ripping his blade free, Satori eased her mind and then commanded to her pets to strike while the timing's right.

Rin flew right in and worked her magic on Alex's soul shields, opening a gap on each side of it before Alex managed to kick her hard in the chest with his right foot. Utsuho used this opportunity, with Satori's guidance of course, to funnel nuclear flames into his hip via a beam. Sanae kept thirty feet away from Alex and raised her gohei, firing divine lasers that curved across the sky to attack his sides in conjunction with the raven.

The blistering heat and peppered lasers slowly whittled down his patience and made him pull the blade out even harder. The bindings and barrier shattered all at once in a gorgeous display of sharded energy, while the force of Alex's final tug allowed him to smack away the lasers and put all his strength into slamming the blunt edge of his blade into Utsuho's beam.

He rammed forth at the raven faster than a speeding bullet, even accounting for all the power Utsuho's forced through her control rod. He rammed her in the chest and withdrew his sword to pound away at it with his fists. He only managed a second of this before Utsuho's body exploded with a sun-like burst of energy to repel him.

She then swung her cape back and surrounded herself in that very same energy to ram into Alex. He put his hands up and grappled her shoulders, falling back and tossing her far, far away into the air. He then got up and swung to the left to face Satori, whose presence he'd been underestimating this entire battle thus far.

She closed her eyes and remained soft in her stance, even as her hand twitched atop her Third Eye. Alex squeezed his fists taut and raised the right one high above his head. As he prepared to charge at Satori, a sudden shock poked straight through his chest, being joined by a beep similar to what you'd hear from a heart rate monitor.

At the same time, Alex's heart skipped a beat and his body temporarily felt cold. He looked behind him and saw Koishi floating there with that same irritating, innocuous smile as she waved her right sleeve up and caused a bolt of energy similar to the visual representation of one's pulse to penetrate his body.

This time around Alex's head throbbed in conjunction with the pain in his heart, as he deduced the reason why as, _"Damn it all, I keep forgetting she's here because of her power."_

Without a presence to her name, it was no wonder she was able to keep slipping past his shields. And while she had expressed a desire to play, her actions were certainly saying otherwise. Alex knew he could not write her off as this mild distraction if she kept this up for much longer.

He stared into her eyes and saw something amidst her hollow pupils. There was this flicker of life, a spark of innocence to put it lightly, that reminded him a bit of **her**. But there was no way whatsoever that Koishi could ever put that same amount of effort into enjoying life and smiling her concerns away like she could.

As he considered the possibility of pushing the girl away with all his might, hoping she'd fly so far away that she'd forget ever coming back, he was rammed roughshod in the side by another large onibashira. He'd lost track of how many shields had been called to his aid by now thanks to Koishi's shenanigans, but the fact he had any at all meant he wasn't in trouble yet.

So after being carried away a good fifty feet from Koishi, who playfully waved him off, Alex pressed his whole body against the bottom of the onibashira and let loose a burst of raw power from his back to force it to a complete stop. He then rose above and hammered it down the mountainside with one punch.

Sanae lowered her gohei and thrust her hand up, summoning a turbulent tunnel of wind to envelop the space between her and him. He charged carelessly through the eye of the storm as it erupted into a bright, furious blaze from Utsuho throwing her flames into the mix from above.

The sweltering heat made Alex break a bit of a sweat, but he laughed it off with his eyes wide open as he declared, "Nice try! Someone already tried this stunt and failed!"

With more strength to draw on this time, Alex ground his body to a complete halt and swiped his right hand down before his waist to force the hot winds to reverse towards Sanae. She crossed her arms before her face and held on for dear life until Utsuho dove in and thrust her arms out to split the winds apart.

Thanks to that long winded distraction, Rin was able to sneak behind him and throw a few vengeful spirits through his body to inflict the chill of vengeance upon his body.

Alex bit his teeth and spun around, punching the air with all his might. Rin grinned and turned into a cat, then scuttled between the boy's legs to safety. By the time he turned again to catch her escape Utsuho was already ramming face-first into his body.

Alex dug his feet hard into the air and pounded away at Utsuho's body with shockwave creating fists that ruptured the side of the mountain. Her advance was stopped after fifteen of these punches, leaving her head spinning around a bit and her babbling incoherently.

Thus the boy raised his hand straight up to her head and charged electricity until millions of volts were coarsing uncontrollably from his palm. Satori grimaced and tried to coerce Utsuho's conscious awake with her Third Eye, only to find that her time was short and quickly fleeting.

Before the final blow was struck Alex's vision was obscured by a string of bright, cheery roses. He immediately grit his teeth and spun his head to the right while yelling, "That's IT!"

But then his heart dropped cold and he let out a haunted gasp as he saw Shina floating in the air with her hands hovering just a little bit aside her waist. That smile, that form, it was all too recognizable. Like a frightened child, Alex palely whispered as a cold sweat trickled down his face, "S-Shina...?!"

The electricity faded from his limping hand in an instant as he slowly drew it up towards his face.

"Now!" Sanae's vigorous yell interrupted the trance Alex was brought under, and upon a single blinking of the eyes he saw not Shina, but Koishi.

His expression immediately turned sour and he swung his fist back as Koishi remained oblivious to his tearful rage, even as his lionesque snarls penetrated her ears. Luckily for the wandering satori, Sanae had used this chance to throw a tight lasso of energy around Alex's waist and tug him in close.

Alex drew his sword and cut the lasso in two, but upon doing so realized that he was now temporarily out of shields to protect himself...Which made the incoming array of lights surrounding him all the more deadly.

Sanae crossed her arms down before her waist and commanded the sphere of stars she'd summoned to fire all at once, without mercy. Alex was instantly pinned down by beams of hot, blinding energy for five long, grueling seconds.

There was no gap to speak of, no exit worth seeking. She had him completely trapped, a beast forced into the cage. But as long as she could make this last, it'd mean nothing if her allies down below weren't prepared. She turned her head back and yelled, "Are the repairs complete?!"

"No! We still need more time!" Nitori yelled. Her response was fraught with confidence, but that was only a little bit reassuring for the shrine maiden.

"More time..." She mumbled as Alex managed to gather the strength to set his body ablaze and throw the beams back to their point of origin and escape.

Sanae gallantly raised her gohei like a knight raising a lance for a joust then yelled from the depths of her heart, "We will defeat you!"

"Shut up!" Alex immediately barked as he drew his sword and swung up with all his might, emblazoning the sky with a scar of fire a hundred feet tall. Sanae widened her eyes for a moment in awe of the boy's power, then quickly flew to the left to evade the flames' rampage forth.

She swiped her gohei along the air twice and threw ghastly orbs of energy around in various locations to befuddle Alex. As he wasted time cutting them down with a single, spherical slash, she then drew more onibashira from the water and sent them twirling and flying his way.

At the speeds they rotated there'd be much greater risk of self-harm were Alex to attack them in his shieldless state. So instead of closing the gap he made a hasty retreat and gave his sword time to charge up flames to fight back.

A bright yellow light lingered in the air, and was growing stronger with every passing second. He looked back and up to find Utsuho creating a miniature sun, its basking light amplifying the pride worn on her smile as she flicked her hand down to drop the sun faster than a hoisted anchor.

Alex turned around, dropped his sword, and raised both his hands to hold the sun at bay. His body also erupted into flames that helped to counteract most of the heat blistering his palms. The onibashira were still coming, and while the idea to throw the sun in their path was a sound one, the orbiting star wasn't something he could move on his own.

So instead he raised his legs against the bottom of the sun and let the onibashira squeeze on by under his back. The sun was able to push him down more, but now that one distraction was dealt with he could focus all his attention on this one.

He closed his fists tight and pressed his knuckles into the sun. The heat made him sweat bucketloads, and the pain was forcing him to cry out in agony. But he managed to hold on through sheer, unfading grit to force his flames deeper into the sun, overloading the core to the point that the sun was ready to pop like a balloon.

Before that happened, with Satori's mental suggestion, Utsuho sucked the flames back into her body, specifically her control rod. She then cocked it before her chest like a gun and fired out a massive beam three times taller than she was.

Alex swung his body to the right to evade it, then bolted forward alongside its fading embers to attack the raven. Utsuho wrapped her body in flames and charged down at him once more. The two's collision created a massive explosion that prevented the two from seeing each other. But Alex could feel her forehead pressing against his, with even their wrinkles interlocking due to how close they were.

As the flames subsided and Alex had her in his sights, his heart once again skipped a beat as he wound up looking at a near perfect reflection of himself. Their irises were deep red, and they embraced the face of gleeful madness.

"I-Is that...me?" He mumbled in an entranced state of guilt. His strength faded and the 'reflection' was able to hold the advantage over him.

"Hehehe...!" Koishi's playful giggles lingered but a few feet overhead of the 'reflection'.

He looked up and saw her laying on her stomach while paddling her legs around, her cheeks pressed up by her palms to create this jarring smile as she said, "This is a lotta fun! Lets keep playing!"

"Cut it OUT!" Alex tried to throw himself past the 'reflection' to pull Koishi down from her lofty self-made perch, but then Utsuho, unshackled from the satori's games, grappled her arms around Alex's stomach and piledrove him straight down towards a lone onibashira Sanae put in her path.

Plans were being made and yelled beyond Alex's ability to hear them, and it pissed him off beyond imagination. His gaze burned with a terrifying rage towards Koishi, who felt a curious shiver crawl up her spine for a moment. The next second, Alex was bashed into the onibashira so hard that his brain rattled inside of his skull and he briefly lost consciousness.

Alas, even someone as thick skulled as him could not crack the mighty onibashira.

Utsuho kept him pinned down while Sanae floated over and used her binding stars on his wrist and ankles and pulled them down around the circumference of the onibashira. His elbows and knees cracked as the pressure continued to be applied, yet the screaming agony was but mere fuel to the flames roaring in his heart.

Alex buried his flaming body into the onibashira's cold metal and melted his way through it, snapping the bindings with his physical strength along the way. Upon reaching the other side of the onibashira he clapped his hands louder than thunder and forced the melting halves of it to be thrown at his enemies.

Sanae sped away but Utsuho wasn't as lucky. Not like it mattered, seeing how she could just as easily melt her way free. Rin targeted Alex with a flurry of vengeful spirits, but he simply drew his blade and started cutting right through them. He narrowed his eyes and flew towards the kasha quicker than lightning with his blade drawing upon the furious flashing electricity of the storm above.

As the lightning howled and flashed a seizure inducing light across the sky, Alex blinked his eyes once and suddenly found himself face-to-face with Shikieiki.

"W-What?!" Their sudden reappearance stalled his blade long enough for 'Shikieiki' to make her escape around him. The throbbing in Alex's head worsened to the point of him grabbing the side of his skull in an iron vice to try and force the pain gone.

Then 'Byakuren' came diving in with a flaming kick to his face, twisting his head back until with a thunderous snap his whole body went spiraling higher into the air. His heart raced against his chest, stopping for the briefest of milliseconds as that familiar twinge of shock pierced his body.

He caught Koishi floating by her lonesome in the sky and began tightly biting down on his teeth, wearing down the enamel as he broke the incessant spiral and charged straight at her. But his fist punched through empty vapor disguised as the satori, who giddily taunted him from an afar, unknown place.

"Lets play hide and seek! Come and find me!"

Alex jerked his head down with a fierce growl and muttered to himself, "Just...ignore her!"

He swerved his head around and found himself surrounded by an empty sky...and silence. Even the wind had ceased to be.

But _something_ was attacking him. He felt his body being pounded into by something resembling a giant hammer, forcing him around like some sort of ragdoll. He spun back and tried to blast the invisible assailant with a beam of flame, only to have his innards suddenly feel like they'd been set aflame.

He lurched his head back and swung his arms out, gasping for air as he let out a scream, "GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"

To everyone else but Satori, it had looked like Alex was losing it. They couldn't see what he was seeing, and only Satori's mind reading Third Eye was able to understand the source of the emptiness the boy was perceiving this very moment.

She tilted her head to the left and saw Koishi innocently swaying her hips with her hands tucked behind her back. The wayward satori grinned her way and giggled, "He's as bad at hide and seek as you are sister!"

This should have been a victorious moment for Satori, but the dread in her heart just couldn't disappear every time she looked her sister in the eyes, "Koishi this is dangerous. You need to get out of here, now!"

"Aww, but the nice lady said I could play..." Koishi muttered without much of a care to listen.

Sanae swung her gohei up and declared, "She's given us a chance to win! I don't know how, but she's gotta keep it up no matter what!"

She then summoned a large sphere of divine energy above Alex and twirled her gohei around in figure eight motions, repeatedly ramming the sphere across his body until he was turned around and facing all of them. Utsuho then took aim with her control rod and blasted him full on with nuclear flames.

Alex felt his body temperature rapidly rising and his skin sweating profusely. He ignited his body on fire to fend off an invisible pain, then started throwing out lightning in all directions.

Koishi hopped around the bolts with a fake look of surprise as they narrowly grazed her dress. Then after a bit she got a rhythm going and started to dance and twirl away from them.

Alex blinked once and finally was able to see everyone again. He bit his teeth into a scowl towards Koishi and charged straight at her with both his hands thrown back, and his body leaving a sonicboom in his wake. He charged flames in his palms and claps them together to unleash a massive beam of fire.

Koishi simply flipped right over it and wound up throwing her hands down to grab onto the sides of Alex's head, patting him down as she lowered herself onto his back and then wrapped her hands gently around his neck.

"You found me~" She giggled in glee.

Alex punched her square in the nose with the back of his left fist and she cobbled back. She then rubbed the blood from her nose and bemoaned, "Heeeeey, we're not playing tag yet!"

"Shut...UP!" Alex pounded the air with his right hand to try and fry Koishi with a fireball, but she simply floated right over it and then disappeared into the wind.

He grabbed onto the front of his head and felt the throbbing return, only now it felt like a migraine.

" _Focus...focus damn it...!"_ The vulnerability of his mental facilities proved too grand a crutch for this kind of battle. Once more succumbing to the illusions of the unconscious mind, he gazed around and saw that where the Kappas once were stood a bunch of bushes and two larges trees.

His eyes flared open as he muttered, "Where did they go...? Where did they GO?!"

He rushed straight for that spot, happening to evade Utsuho's brave charge. The Kappas were frightened by his forceful descent that quaked the ground at their feet and knocked them down. He swung his head back and forth while his heart raced faster and faster.

"It was here...I know it was!"

With one heart-pounding "Thump!" he curled his lips inward and widened his eyes as far as they'd go while limping over in pain.

"Koishi...Its always Koishi...!" He screamed as he forced his mind to remember and hold onto the image of her presence on the battlefield. His wings then raised up high as he stood up and limply drew his sword above his head and looked towards the towering 'tree'.

"There you are...You meddlesome machine!" He swung his sword down with all his might and started to cut through. But it didn't take long for a few drops of blood to spray onto his face right below the eyes and realize that he was not cutting through steel...He was cutting into Rin, who stood between him and the machine with her arms barely held up and her face quickly looking tired.

"This machine is...Lady Satori's hope...I-I will...protect her hope..." She whispered weakly in defiance.

Satori tightly gripped her Third Eye and let out a loud, blood curling scream, "RIIIIN!"

Alex continued to cut Rin down to her heart, then pulled his blade right out and burned any further blood that flew his way as she collapsed. He tightly bit down on his teeth and muttered in deep frustration, "Why do you Youkai keep throwing your lives away...?!"

Before he got a second chance to strike the machine, he felt the air around him turn cold and hollow, as though the life from the atmosphere had been drained away completely. His vision was consumed in a pitch black darkness, leaving him blissfully unaware of what was unfolding outside.

Sanae started crying a bit as she flung her gohei down and quickly tossed Alex's body around with a few gusts of wind. Once he'd been suspended higher up, Utsuho rammed into him from the left with a furious yell, throwing him somewhere close to the center of the two machines.

"A-Are you finished now?!" Sanae yelled after throwing the tears aside with her sleeve.

"Just a few more seconds!" Nitori yelled back as she started crawling out from the machine.

Sanae thrust her gohei up and bound Alex's wrists and ankles with two laters of bindings, surprised to find that he wasn't budging.

As his vision lied wrapped in black, he heard the wet, tiny echoes of footsteps approach him from the front. He slowly raised his head up and saw ripples but no person attached to them. The ripples parted the darkness to create this bright and sunny field of flowers, whose presence put Alex's heart at ease.

Then as more of the environment became unveiled the legs of the person, wrapped up in these nice biege jeans, drew ever closer to him. Then came the blue shirt, the flowing blonde hair, and the familiar smile of the one he loved. Alex closed his eyes and felt tears trickle down his cheeks as the person put a hand to his mouth and gently lowered him to the ground, taking residence beside him on her knees.

"Its ok..." She whispered like the wind.

Alex's eyes began to close but he struggled to keep them open. As he put in this effort, he blinked once and saw Koishi replacing **her** with these glowing, empty eyes and a large knife held suspended above his chest.

" _I don't want to have_ _ **fun**_ _anymore..."_

The very moment she stabbed that blade down into his heart, Alex snapped right back into reality feeling as though his own heart was no longer there. He screamed and screamed and then gasped some more as this hollow void in his chest felt like it flooded with warm blood in seconds. His mind, torn asunder, struggled to maintain control over his body as fire sprayed from his skin like a mad sweat.

"NOW?!" Sanae screamed.

"YES, NOW!" Nitori barked in relief as she smashed the red button down with her fist and both machines returned to life. They charged their energy up and prepared to fire.

" _Its not real its not real...None of this is real...!"_ Alex scrambled to salvage what little sanity his brain had been reduced to. The Anti-Genesis Theorem was coming in fast and hot, and if it collided with his body then he had lost and Yukari would have won.

" _I won't allow it...I WON'T ALLOW IT!"_ His body couldn't fully move. But his arms, specifically his right one, could. He dug in to his pocket and touched the Gaia Temporis with a quick, desperate tap. It didn't need any further motivation beyond that. Time froze in an instant around him, the interlocking beams of Theorem energy stopping inches from his arms.

Their abundance of lifeless power made his skin crawl just from the sight of it. He slowly breathed in and out, in and out, in and out...In the lonesomeness of the frozen time he could relax and regain his sanity. And Koishi's power would be unable to reach him any longer.

Panting for air with a face drenched in sweat, he lifted his head up and saw the wayward girl just floating there, her presence plain and clear for all to see. She was smiling, blissfully unaware of what she had done. But Alex snarled his teeth and muttered, "No...you knew exactly what you were doing."

He then closed his eyes and reprimanded himself with a gasp, "I shouldn't have underestimated you..."

He took his right hand beside his head and channeled his power into creating a meteor twice as big as his body, "But that's over now..."

He resumed time the moment he flew back and flicked his hand forward to send the meteor flying down. Koishi stared wide-eyed at its approach and tilted her head, unsure of what to do. The Anti-Genesis Theorem missed its mark, and this time Nitori's mouth jaw slacked as much as it could while the rest of her comrades began cowering on their hands and knees, cuddled up like turtles.

"KOISHI!" Satori, her heart already chained with enough grief, selfishly shielded her sister with her own body while her eyes were lit up with tears.

The meteor collided with her back and exploded, sending the two plummeting into the mountaintop near the Moriya Shrine together. Satori's backside became a black wasteland of scorched skin as she remained pressed against her sister, pressing her teeth together to endure the pain as Koishi tilted her head and pondered, "...Is everything ok sis?"

Alex threw his hand down and turned to the left, where Utsuho charged forward with her body madly burning with the flames of hell. She smashed her control rod into his face, only to be met with the heavy resistance of his soul shield. He grimaced slightly and then stared her down with the chill of a thousand arctic winters.

Utsuho gasped and then became helpless as Alex grabbed onto her control rod and tore it clean off, the scattered pieces falling like rain towards a pointless oblivion. He then forced her body around towards the mountain and planted his blazing right hand against the eye on her chest.

"This battle's over." He stated plainly. He could not stand to be cruel, he could not stand to rub his victory in his opponents' faces. With just a simple statement of the truth, he forced his flames into Utsuho's body much like how he handled the sun.

Utsuho's skin turning blistering white hot as nuclear flames started to spill forth from her mouth and eyes in seconds. Then with one gentle thrust, Alex forced the erupting raven towards the very same spot her master and sister were lying.

Satori could feel the heat encroaching from behind and wrapped her arms tightly around her sister's chest, crying at the top of her lungs, "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry...

Koishi stared at her for a bit, then raised her right hand to her sister's back and gently patted it as Utsuho crashed into them.

Alex turned away as an explosion took out not just the mountaintop, but the whole entirety of Youkai Mountain a single, terrifying moment. His shield staved off the heat and debris that happened to survive, while he tucked his hands into his pockets with a look of indifference on his face.

As he hung his head and let out a sigh, Sanae squeezed her arms against her chest and felt her heart sink towards her stomach. The blast towered high over all of Gensokyo, and when it was gone there wasn't even a stone remaining of her home nor the mountain it stood upon.

"I-Its all gone...A-All of its...gone..." She whispered as her skin turned more pale than the clothes she wore.

"This never would have happened had you just fought Yukari." Alex coldly responded.

Sanae bit her lower lip and screamed, "How could you say that?! You destroyed everything! C-Cause all you do is destroy!"

"How can YOU say that?! Has that witch got you so under her spell that you've forgotten everything about me?! Or about Shina?!" Alex yelled bitterly in defiance.

The shrine maiden closed her mouth tight and was forced to endure his angered ranting, "And newsflash! Yukari doesn't give a SHIT about any of you! She doesn't care that you're fighting for her, or for her land! All she cares about is herself, and the ground you settled down on!"

He squeezed his right fist up and out before his face while biting his teeth down to the point of trembling, "And if you DARE sully either, she'll do everything in her power to make you pay, no matter who gets in her way! That bitch tried to get me and Shina to kill each other! And nearly succeeded!"

"S...She did what?" Sanae muttered a gasp.

" _Sanae, don't listen to him!"_ Kanako screamed in her head.

Alex swung his fist out towards the horizon and pointed at the cracks forming in the sky, "Now look what's happening! The Hakurei Barrier's breaking at the seams! That bitch's so vindictive that she'd rather kill Reimu and bury me alive in Gensokyo's destruction than DARE let me ruin her vision of it!"

Sanae swallowed slowly as she shakily raised her gohei towards Alex and said, "I-I don't believe you! There's no way Reimu's dead!"

Alex squeezed his fist shut and shook his head as he closed his eyes, "Not like I could prove that to you now..."

Sanae gasped and swung her head back with her pupils shrinking to the size of needlepoints. Alex had punctured his sword right through her chest in the blink of an eye, and as he drew his eyes away from her gasping desperately for air he ripped the blade free and remarked, "But I can't even begin to imagine what it'd feel like to die in a collapsing realm. Let this be my mercy to you, Sanae Kochiya..."

The shrine maiden's arms hung as she fell from the sky bleeding profusely from the wound, ultimately dragging Kanako and Suwako to their deaths along with her. Alex turned away, unable to face her any longer, and looked down towards the crater after dispelling his sword.

"...Another one bites the dust..." He grumbled with the grief of his heart feeling as light as a feather. He raised his hands up beside his chest and saw them trembling like a leaf tickled by a gentle breeze.

"...Hrmmm..." With a deep sigh through his nostrils he aimed his hands at the ground and concentrated on draining the energy from the crater to heal himself up.

"...Is there even anyone left at this point?" He pondered by his lonesome.

"Yeah...RIGHT HERE!"

"What?" Before Alex could peek over his shoulder a mighty fist smashed into his hip and ruptured the air with six shockwaves of growing size. Each shockwave represented a different one of his soul shields being shattered like glass, culminating in his body crashing down into the center of the crater like a fallen meteorite.

He landed on his feet and hung down with his fingertips digging into the ground to bring him to a stop. Then as he raised his head he saw Suika sitting on her hip atop a rock a couple hundred feet away, drinking merrily from her sake gourd.

Alex narrowed his eyes and growled, "Oh, so now _you're_ stepping up to the plate?"

A second figure crashed down upon the ground twenty feet to the left of Suika, reducing the rock to rubble as she cracked her roughened, weary knuckles. She was much taller than the other oni, perhaps even taller than Alex himself was. She had long, straight blonde hair and powerful red eyes, with a single red horn coming out of her forehead. Her dress of choice was a white short-sleeved shirt with red trim at the cuffs, and a darkb-lue semi-transparent skirt with red highlights and trims. For an oni, she was surprisingly well-dressed, but her arms and legs were rippling thick with muscle tone.

"Not alone she ain't!" The oni gruffly cried as she tilted her head and bore her fanged scowl at Alex.

 **The Rampaging Storm of the Devas: Yuugi Hoshiguma**

Onis are dangerous enough creatures for most Youkai to fight one a time, but Yuugi and Suika stood above the rest of their kin as two members of the legendary Four Devas of the Mountain. Even Alex felt nervous staring at them both, especially after Yuugi demonstrated her strength by shattering multiple soul shields in one punch, a feat that should be impossible off physical strength alone.

Then, when it seemed his troubles were at an end, a massive dome of energy swept over the crater's perimeter and sealed the three off from the rest of the world, covering even the ground they walked on.

"We were too late...If only the Moriyas could have held out just a little longer..." A softer, more sagely sounding person descended upon the middle of the two onis riding on the claws of a large brown hawk.

The pink haired woman landed on one foot and assumed a balanced martial artist's stance, posing her bandaged right arm and flesh given left one towards Alex. Dressed in a fancy white shirt and green skirt covered slightly by a brown front panel that has a thorny vine motif and a large rose-shaped ornament, the woman peered as him with calm but nasty red eyes.

Alex started to sweat as he rose upright squeezing both his fists tight by his hips, "So Yukari's finally sending out her big guns to play...Isn't that right...Kasen Ibaraki?"

 **THE YOUKAI SAGE OF THE DEVAS:** _ **KASEN IBARAKI**_

Kasen firmly held her stance as she responded with the discipline granted by her title, "You've run amok long enough Phoenix of Destruction. We fight you not for her sake, but for the sake of all Gensokyo!"

"You're fighting for a dying dream! Why don't you save me the trouble of fighting you three and wake the HELL up!" Alex viciously barked back.

Suika swung her gourd onto her back and stood up, wiping the slobber of sake from her lips as she yelled back, "Doesn't look like you got much of a leg to stand on buddy. All those guys sure did do a number on ya, whether you wanna admit it or not."

Alex barely turned to look at himself, finding that he did feel just a bit drained of energy compared to when he started this long, grueling fight. Nevertheless he swung his head up and exclaimed, "So what?! I don't care if you gathered together all FOUR Devas! As long as Yukari remains alive..."

He leapt off the ground running like a cheetah and swung his arms out with a body on fire and his eyes wide with madness, "I'LL TEAR THROUGH ANY WALL SHE ERECTS IN MY PATH!"

Yuugi closed her eyes and finished flexing her fingers with a sigh, "Well...Here we go then."

"Lets show 'em a good time, shall we?" Suika said with a grin.

"Indeed," Kasen admitted with a slight nostalgic feeling in her heart, "This shall be an unforgettable experience for us all!"

And so the three Devas stood their grounds, preparing for the greatest, and perhaps last, battle of their lives...

 _Next Time: Dominion of Power_


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10: The Fall of Power**

Charging headlong into the fray with his adrenaline whipped into a frenzy, Alex lunged at the onis with only mere seconds to decide who to target. Each one of them would be difficult to face with the others around. Suika could shift her density around, Kasen surely had plenty of tricks up her sleeve as a Youkai Sage, but Yuugi? Yuugi had already used up her one trick to break his shields.

By that logic, that made her the easiest to separate from the other two. But as he made the sudden turn her way those red eyes of her lit up like a christmas tree and she swung her fist out. Halfway through her punch Alex felt air pressure against his body capable of flattening a whole forest, and realized he was making a **huge** mistake.

He opened his fist and grabbed Yuugi's the moment it collided with his palm. His arm instantly but briefly felt like jello, and had she attacked from any other angle his arm would've been rammed through his shoulder socket like a thick nail. He was thrown back through the air but managed to carry her along, mostly because she wanted that.

Alex slammed his feet down and threw two punches into Yuugi's gut. It was almost like chiseling away at raw diamond, comparitively speaking. Once his other arm stiffened up he clenched his hands together into a single solid fist and hammered it up into her chin. She was knocked a couple inches off the ground and grinned coming back down. Before her punch could smash his skull down he zipped fifty feet away and gasped.

" _I got her beat with speed but that's it...Damn! Oni's are a hell of a lot tougher than I thought!"_ Alex looked grimly ahead and saw that the other two had disappeared. Not only that, but the ground at his feet was strangely soft. Upon looking down, he found a peculiarly colored puddle wiggling its way between his legs.

He immediately spun back as Suika emerged fully formed from the puddle and swung her right fist around like a helicoptor's blades and threw a heavy punch down at his chest. Alex grabbed her fist in both hands and held on tight, but felt his neck hairs stick up on end as Yuugi began a daring charge. He swung Suika back to get in Yuugi's way, then leapt away before the oni's monsterous punch could knock him down.

Suika split into two small selves and bounced off Yuugi's broad shoulders and head in quick succession, then used each other to fling higher up and recombine into a single unit, which proceeded to quickly grow a hundred feet tall. Casting her shadow upon the whole battlefield made Alex's heart sink to his gut.

"Oh shit..." He widened his eyes as the oni turned around and put one fist out in front, a look of drunken splendor on her face. Her body came down with so much force that her fist was quickly ignited like a world-ending meteorite.

Alex tried to flee but found a white bandage lasso'd around his waist the second his feet left the ground. Kasen, standing ten feet away, wrenched him off the ground and up towards Suika's path. And for good measure, Yuugi leapt and pounded him in the gut to press him against Suika's gigantic, burning knuckles.

A bit of blood dribbled from the sides of his mouth as he reached for his right pocket and touched the Gaia Temporis. Once time stopped and he had room to breathe he sucked his gut in and slipped free of their combined force. He then sped fifty feet away and pivoted his body around while having his arms thrown back together by his right hip.

"Lets see how you like it...!" He yelled as he began charging flames between his cupped palms and letting time resume on its own.

"I knew you'd try that!" Kasen shouted eerily close from behind.

Alex jerked back around and unleashed his flaming blast point-blank upon the hermit oni. She felt nothing but hot wind singing her skin as she dunked a powerful energy ball into his face.

The blast didn't just hurt his body but chipped away at his soul. Kasen then wrapped him up in her bandages and pulled him in closer to deliver a few punches across his face. Though her strength wasn't as great as her comrades', she knew to target the more delicate parts of Alex's face, such as his jaw and cheekbones.

Meanwhile, Suika shrunk down until Yuugi could easily grab onto her fist and spin her around. Whilst they remained mid-air, Yuugi built up whirlwind speeds and then flung her little friend through the air like a baseball.

Kasen released Alex and swerved away right as Suika kicked both her feet into Alex's back, driving him right into the side of the barrier. His head and neck bent back and his spine felt as brittle as wood. But before he could be broken in two he zapped Suika with high voltage to force her off, which she did so with a merry smile.

Alex peeled off the barrier and turned around, throwing his hands up to his shoulders and throwing an assortment of summoned meteorites across the arena.

Yuugi hopped in front of Kasen as they all landed and with one casual swing of her arm she obliterated the meteors with a shockwave, leaving the rest to crumble harmlessly behind them.

Alex pressed his palms back and built up heat until the flames spurted blue from his skin. Then he let loose like a rocket and propelled himself at all three onis. With speed at his side he engaged Yuugi head-on with a whirlwind of punches.

But like the Great Wall she remained indomitable to all opposition and eventually swept her leg up along the ground to trip the boy up.

He didn't care in the slightest about this distraction and reeled his fists back, smashing one of them straight into Yuugi's forehead to unleash a blast carrying the force of a hundred tons of TNT across all three onis. Yuugi, though roughened, immediately charged out of the smoke and impaled Alex's abdomen on her horn.

Instead of struggling to break free and pureeing his guts, Alex funneled wind into his palms and blasted Yuugi in the face to launch himself back. Yet his valiant escape was foiled by Kasen, who was already waiting for him from behind, her presence as unseen as the wind.

"How did she...?!" Alex amassed confusion quickly in his head as he tried to comprehend how she did it. She had gone from beside Suika to behind him in less than a second. That could only mean she was capable of instantaneous movement. Maybe, just maybe, he had overestimated his speed advantage...

Kasen took full advantage of the element of surprise to turn Alex around with a single grazing kick, then rapidly thrust the tip of her foot into the area surrounding the impalement wound in his gut. A dozen of these kicks was enough to make Alex cough blood, which Kasen absorbed into her bandages.

She didn't let up. After a punch to his chest to wind him, Kasen held her palms close together and rammed a large bubble of spirit energy through his body, where it proceeded to pop out of his back. Then she let him land and wobble on his legs.

He squeezed his fists and thrust his head up with scowling teeth. Concentrating on the ground below, he prepared to absorb the elemental energy from the dirt to heal himself up a bit, only to be met with nothing.

"...Huh?" He muttered.

"What do you think this barrier's for?" Kasen observed with mild arrogance in her voice.

Before he could curse her out for this injustice, Kasen took the liberty of pounding him across the chest with a vicious left hook to send him at Yuugi's mercy. She responded by booting him straight up to the ceiling with what amounted to a casual effort on her part.

Alex grit his teeth and spread his wings to stall in place inches from the ceiling. A dozen tiny Suikas flew at him hoping to finish the job, but Alex refused to let this stand. He crossed his arms and wrapped his wings in front of him, summoning a massive air bubble around his body to fend off their combined strength.

Then he made the bubble pop to throw them back down, where they slowly formed back into the original Suika while evading Alex's fireballs. But at that point Alex was able to peg her with one massive lightning bolt. He was sure he had done harm, but the way she smiled certainly was trying to tell him otherwise.

" _Gotta change priorities..."_ He said while turning towards Kasen. In his mind, killing her would dismantle this accursed barrier in an instant. Not like he had much of a choice.

But he knew the only way to take her by surprise would be to use his Gaia Temporis to stop time and get up to her during that frozen period. Once he accomplished this task in the time it took her to blink he leapt straight in front of her and swung his left fist towards her cheeks.

She used her bandage to wrap up and hold his arm back, forcing him to punch her with his other fist. The resounding thunderclap that followed distracted Kasen from the fact she had a tooth knocked out, but that was far from her greatest concern.

Now that she had Alex in her grasp she spun back and flung him straight into the path of Yuugi's punch, which hammered into his back and nearly shattered his spine. As he wondered how his body held on like this against so much pain, Suika joined in by pounded his gut, her fist lined up perfectly even with Yuugi's.

Blood sprayed from his mouth and drizzled onto his chin. With a twitchy, bloody grin he set his body ablaze to force Kasen off, then used his freed arms to grapple Suika's horns tight in his grasp. He tried to toss her overhead onto Yuugi's horn, but she foiled that by shrinking to miniature size and sliding down it instead.

"You wanna play dirty...?" Alex growled as he tightened his rough and ragged knuckles and spun towards Kasen, "Then lets play dirty!"

He rushed her down with a flurry of swify pummels around her body. She held on like a wall and raised one leg to fend off his attacks. But as she did so she found her leg trembling from within. Alex resorted to attacking with the force of magnitude ten quakes, each and every blow pounding away with that exact same level of power.

Kasen thus whipped her leg up between his arms to hit his chest and knock him towards Yuugi. But, almost as though anticipating this action, he turned the millisecond he was kicked and threw a punch directly into Yuugi's fist.

The two starting matching blows with perfect, brutal force capable of tearing apart the largest known volcano from within. Alex laughed and chuckled his way through the pain his knuckles were going through, his basic, primal instincts taking over against these base, bestial demons.

Yuugi's enjoyment of this fight could not be stated enough. Her thrill of the fight was unquenchable. Her adrenaline pumped like a river roaring. Her blood boiled like magma flowing. But having gotten too wrapped up in the joy of this contest of strength, it took her a moment to realize that blood was starting to fly out of cuts between her knuckles.

Alex had turned his knuckles into sharp blades of diamond and used his speed to cut her in-between his punches.

" _Without tendons or nerves even an oni will eventually wear down!"_ He declared triumphantly in his head as the sweat glistened down his forehead.

Sure enough, Yuugi's punches weren't following through with as much 'Oomph!' as they were before. Alex was starting to be able to perfectly match her strength, slowly but surely.

Yet this only increased the thrill of the fight in her eyes. Never before has she gotten to be pushed to such extremes in battle, not even by her fellow Devas. Thus she bore her fangs in her gritty smile for the first time and hammered his head between her fists, sending a sharp ring through his eardrums.

Alex retaliated by protruding sharp blades from his arms and swiping them across her gut. He managed to draw a little blood before she dragged him out of range and started squeezing his head like a watermelon.

Alex's eyes bulged and his skull began to crack. So to settle this engagement, he stabbed his arm blades into the underside of Yuugi's arms and prepared to rip right across them. Kasen intervened by wrapping her bandages around his shoulders and tugging the arms down, while Suika marched underneath Yuugi's legs and rammed into him as a tiny stampede of herself to trip him up.

Upon being forced into this precarious position Alex found his face pounded into by Yuugi's right knee, which instantly broke his nose and left him gasping raspily.

"Still breathing eh?" She murmured as she went for another shot. Alex opened his mouth wide and bit down on Yuugi's knee with diamond teeth, tearing off a decent bit of flesh as she slammed her foot back down. In her moment of shock Alex pushed his body out from her fists and turned back to spit the flesh into Kasen's face.

It spoke volumes of the life she'd led that even that wasn't enough to make her flinch. But it was merely a distraction, after all, for Alex's true goal. As he coughed and hacked blood Alex ripped free from her bandages and turned to tackle her in the chest with his shoulder.

Using the iron in the blood he'd spilled so far in his name, Alex created a large spike from his shoulder and impaled Kasen partially into her gut.

Suika immediately dropped in from the side to try and punch him away, but he let go all on his own and skidded along the ground away from her. The friction from his departure lined the floor with electrified mines, but Suika handled that by growing three times in size and stamping them down.

She then swung her chains around from the sides, creating hurricane winds from their slightest movement. Alex wasn't a fool. Trying to absorb the elemental energy of the chains would end in him being swatted like a fly if he tried. So instead he endured the accosting winds and flew straight towards Suika's chest.

Yuugi intercepted him with a punch from above, dragging the two of them down far away from the others. Alex dug his feet down first and twisted his head towards Yuugi in sheer defiance of her strength, "You're weakening, aren't you?"

"Still tough enough to kick your ass!" She proudly boasted.

"We'll see about THAT!" Alex swung his palms up to her gut and threw her over his head onto her back. She rolled onto her feet and charged straight with her horn. He ducked and threw a left hook at the cuts in her gut, coating his skin with a series of poisoned thorns.

She clobbered him in the face to knock him down, scoffing with a humored tone, "Like a little poison'll harm an oni!"

Alex pushed himself off his back and lunged himself right back at her. She swung a right hook at his head that he ducked back and slid underarm to evade. He then twisted right and cut her along the back with his diamond bladed knuckles, followed by her ramming his face with her elbow.

He just stood there and smiled, having coated his face with diamond to lessen the pain. He then grabbed onto Yuugi's arm and gave it a twist, but could only manage to budge it an inch. She then grinned and tried to turn back to punch him with her other arm.

Alex swung his arms down and summoned a pillar of ice down from her left arm to hold her down, preventing her from making the full turn for a moment. He slowly backed away a few steps and observed his surroundings. Kasen had made her presence scarce, which Alex interpretted as her preparing another sneak attack from behind.

But whereas his eyes were on the ground, perhaps he'd have been wiser to look towards the sky. For as soon as a blinding white light flashed down from above, it was already too late. With her mystical power, Kasen had called forth a glowing serpent that was fifty feet long and the markings of a dragon barely visible amidst its luminescent form.

Wrapped in the middle of its form, Kasen swung her right hand down and bellowed out "Go!" On command the dragon unleashed a devastating bolt of lightning upon Alex. It was unlike other lightning, which he could tame with a snap of his fingers. These lightning bore the weight of heaven upon him, weakening even his soul with the force of guilt.

The lightning could only last a moment, after which the dragon disappeared from whence it came, but the savagery of that one attack charred Alex's skin and left him trembling for ten seconds. During that time Yuugi wound up a punch and strolled on over him, determined to deliver the final blow.

When she swung it up towards his chin Alex clasped one hand around her knuckles and forced it down, glaring up at the oni with trembling, blistering hot eyes.

"I said... _No one..._ " He squeezed Yuugi's knuckles tighter and dragged her in to pound her stomach with one hard punch, spewing blood from his mouth as he screamed, "IS GETTING IN MY WAY!"

Yuugi went "Ooof!" quietly then grit her teeth and bellowed, "You really don't go down easy, do ya?!"

"No..." Alex lodged his hand deep into her stomach wound and before she could blink, the tip of his sword was sticking out from the back of her mouth, having been summoned inside of her body.

"But you will." He whispered as he ripped the blade free, cutting her heart in two. Blood began spilling from her insides as Alex turned away.

Then his shoulders were pressed down with incredible force, and a haunting chill ran right up his spine as he found his head swiveling back on its own.

Yuugi stood tall and strong with her innards flooding with blood and raised her head, her sclera a dark and bloody violet, "Don't think...I'M DONE WITH YOU YET!"

With a roar that could crack a mountain she tossed Alex towards the sky, where Kasen kicked him in the side to twirl him around and keep him from fighting back or escaping. Yuugi leapt off the ground, cracking the barrier in her wake, and grabbed hold of Alex by his waist and bound his legs up between hers.

"THIS IS THE GRAND FINALE!"

Turning upside-down and spinning around and around to become a devilish drill of blood and sweat, Yuugi piledrove Alex headfirst into the ground while yelling at the top of her lungs, "SHUTEN DOUJI'S ABSOLUTE PILEDRIVER!"

The back of Alex's neck snapped and he let out one raspy gasp as he collapsed face-first onto the floor, freed by Yuugi's life reaching its definitive end. She made her bretheren proud in that moment. For she did not go quietly into the night. She died as she lived. Loud, and proud.

As Kasen and Suika walked up to her, they found her smiling. Suika pulled out her gourd, raised it up high, and took a swig of sake from it.

But the celebration was premature, for as Yuugi's corpse lied satisfied on the ground, the blood oozing from it was being dragged over to Alex's body along with flakes of bones and teeth. Alex slammed his hands on the ground and curled his fingers in, pushing himself up onto his feet in a matter of seconds while panting and gasping for air.

He stared at the two remaining onis with somewhat hazy vision and his heart beating at a startling rate, _"I had to drain that much just to recover from that last attack...! And there's still two of them left!"_

He bit his teeth down as Suika turned and nodded at Kasen before putting her gourd back onto her back and cracking her knuckles, "Guess we still got work to do."

"Lets go, Suika." Kasen said while readying her stance.

Without a tear shed for their comrade the two onis threw themselves at Alex simultaneously, attacking him from his sides. Alex thrust his palms out towards their fists and fended them off with powerful blasts, though felt his arms retracting a bit into his shoulders.

Though his limbs were wobbly he jerked left and ran after Kasen through the smoke. By the time he emerged she had vanished, using her instantaneous movement to get behind and above him, delivering a swift kick to his cranium that led to him stumbling over.

Alex swung his right arm back and called vines from the ground to grab Kasen's legs and throw her down. He then turned and leapt over her, stabbing his blade down at her gut. She snapped free from her bindings and kicked her legs up into his gut, causing him to drop his sword.

Suika then hopped over her and tripled the size of her fist to punch his whole body down. Alex grinded his feet along the ground and squeezed his left hand out, grabbing onto Suika with compressed air and tugging her right over to where he was.

Suika turned into mist and flew past his head, turning parts of that mist into bit-sized Suikas that pummeled his face along the way. But before she could reform herself completely Alex spun around and slapped the ground, raising his hands right up to flashfreeze her in a rough pillar of ice.

Kasen ran up and kicked him into the ice, and once he bounced off it she battered him repeatedly with kicks to use his body to chip down the ice. Alex swung his arms out and extended spears from the ice to pierce along Kasen's limbs. Fortunately, her right arm just happened to be missing, and its bandaged form could freely unravel around the ice and wrap around Alex's chest.

She flung him far away and landed next to her imprisoned friend. Waving her right hand back she thawed her out with a puff of fire, allowing Suika to break the rest of the prison by swinging her hands up as though performing a cheer.

Kasen swung her arm out and summoned a lightning dragon to ram into Alex's body. Alex didn't want to suffer a similar pain to that blast from before and dropped to the ground, rushing underneath the dragon with his head hung low and his arms swung out.

He flicked tons of fireballs at Kasen, only for Suika to swing her chains in the way to put them out. Suika pounded her chains into the ground and used them as support to vault herself over into Alex's path. She shrunk to get under his chin, then grew five times her regular size to uppercut him.

Alex spun around a bit before stabilizing himself with an outward burst of air and diving straight down at Suika. He punched her in the face with all he had and though she staggered like she was drunk, she threw all that weight forward into an even stronger punch that threw Alex all the way across the battlefield into the barrier.

Kasen warped instantly to his location and pinned him in place with her right leg, applying pressure to make blood ooze from his mouth. With wobbling arms Alex grabbed onto her leg and pulled her off the ground, ramming her into the barrier.

He pulled away and used his blood to create an iron nail that he threw into her left shoulder. She instantly grabbed it with her right arm and ripped it out with an emotionless expression before throwing it towards his chest. Alex swerved to the left and widened his eyes, then found Kasen's bandages wrapping around his neck.

She whipped him back and forth against the barrier a few times then pulled her in once she landed, laying him out on the floor with a single punch. Suika's shadow loomed overhead as she brought her giant foot down, forcing him to quickly roll out of the way.

But while he was still sent flying by the shockwave of the stomp, he used the dust kicked up to obscure himself away from Kasen. Pulling out yet another trick from her bag, Kasen whipped her bandages around in a whirlwind to blow the dust away in an instant, then went flying straight after Alex.

She grabbed onto his face and drove him into the ground, letting go to bounce onto and rapidly kick his gut. By now Alex was positive his guts were paste, but if they were he barely had the ability to feel it.

" _I wonder if its as frustrating for them as it is for me that I won't die..."_ He pondered before forcing himself into the heat of battle and snatching onto Kasen's leg to throw her to the ground. But he threw so hard that he went tumbling around a bit as well.

He planted his hands on the ground and got up before Kasen. Taking advantage of this opportunity, he rammed forward and stabbed his sword towards her chest. She deflected his daring attack with one hand so the blade'd end up under her arm for her to clamp it down and used as a means to twirl him around.

Alex dispelled his blade and swung his head back as Suika came diving in for a punch, pulling away the second before his skull was caved in. He pounded the air with both fists and knocked the two away with explosions, utilizing a few more on Suika for safekeeping.

He then engaged Kasen alone in close combat, flailing his arms around trying to get her to defend her face with both of hers. It didn't take long to accomplish that, upon which he turned his sweat into hot water and flung it into her eyes. She flared them wide open and didn't relent in her ferocity.

Stamping the ground down she smashed her right fist into his gut and caused a burst of energy to pop out of his back. Alex coughed raggedly and threw a few more punches at her face to repeat the process. This was a battle of endurance for him at this point. It didn't matter that he ran on fumes. He wasn't going to get on his knees and surrender to pain, no matter how bad it got. If he were to die, he'd do so standing up.

Once Kasen locked her arms together in defense of his attacks, he bound them up in steel rope coming out from his palms and reeled his hands back to his chest. He summoned his blade and stabbed it forth into hers, breaking through the skin and rib cage bone before she snapped her bindings and slammed her hands into the blade to stop it a centimeter from her chest.

With a relieved hiss she held on tight and refused to let go, ignorant of the smirk Alex wore as he dispelled his blade and weaved his hands past hers to dig his fingers deep into her chest wound. She pulled her arms out, trying to force him free.

But from where he stood Alex was in the perfect spot to quake her insides and weaken her strength a lot. With the rest of his strength he started pulling her body in half, telling her as she widened her eyes in a mix of shock and anger, "You chose the wrong side, Kasen Ibaraki..."

He tore her apart, flesh and bone alike, right down the middle, letting the blood and fluids spill onto his body as he swung his arms down and leaned his head towards the sky, releasing a loud, gargly cry of exhaustion. The barrier instantly shattered without its master's power to maintain it, exposing those who remained in battle to the dark skies of a dying Gensokyo. In the midst of their fight, the cracks had spread out just a bit more, whilst the thunder and rain still flooded the air.

Sucking in the moisture of blood and water into his body to heal up just a bit more, Alex lurched upright and hung his head to glare over at the last remaining deva, and perhaps the last oni in all Gensokyo, Suika Ibuki.

She just stood there, looking as hapless as ever as she drank from her gourd. At this point, Alex was feeling like he was being insulted.

"You're the last one left...Don't you have _anything_ to say?!" He demanded even a word of mourning from the tiny devil, but instead she responded softly towards his enticing bravado.

"You just don't get it, do you?" She lowered her gourd and with her eyes halfway shut she shook her head in pity and said, "Why'd you have to come along and ruin a good thing?"

"Good thing...?" Alex gasped before he swung his arms back by his hips and yelled, "What's good about a dream built on manipulation and lies?!"

"To which I ask you what's so bad about enjoying a dream?" Suika raised her gourd up and with a drunken smile remarked, "Don't you have dreams of your own?"

"...That's not important," Alex cooled down a moment to growl that before exclaiming, "This isn't your dream! Its hers!"

"Yeah well..." Suika closed her eyes and swished the sake around in her gourd, "A lot of us happen to like it regardless. That's why we're fighting so hard to keep it safe, y'know?"

"And look at how she repaid you...By killing Reimu and setting Gensokyo to self-destruct, just to get rid of me!"

"...You really, REALLY don't get it, do you?" Suika snarked with a sigh before looking into her gourd with one eye open and whispering, "...One more for the road, eh?"

She took a large gulp from her gourd, the sake dripping down the sides of her rosey cheeks. Then she flung the gourd to the ground to shatter it completely and hunched over, raising her long-nailed fingers like claws and bearing all her fangs in the most beastly grin someone as small as her could muster.

"One more round Phoenix of Destruction. Winner take all."

Alex narrowed his eyes then closed them completely. He drew his sword, brightening the dark atmosphere with its crimson haze, and pointed it straight towards Suika. She chuckled once and then kicked straight off the ground after him.

Alex stabbed the dirt and transformed stone into ice, causing her to trip up seconds after the battle started. She split up into a bunch of tiny Suikas and skid around the ice, punching through the stalactites he set in her path. Then they all combined back into one and leapt at him.

He used the blunt edge of his sword to block the first punch, but her second one got his knees bending halfway down. He pushed up with all his might and forced her off, where she grew three times her size and shattered the ice beneath her feet and uprooted most of the ground.

Alex flew towards her head but she shrunk down to evade his broad, flaming slash. He immediately looked down and dunked a lightning bolt in her path, causing her to spread out in a ring of goop to avoid it and then snap back into her regular state.

Alex dove down to punch her, smashing the ground when she becomes mist, but then immediately spun around and around with his arms out to whip up a tornado to dipserse her body into the sky. All those little molecules of mist turned into their own Suika that grew to be the size of a thumb and converged onto Alex's location.

Alex folded his wings in and attempted the air bubble strategy again, but this time there were way too many Suikas to overcome and they popped the bubble and began pummeling him all at once. He quickly had to spread his wings to shake most of them off, then spun around to get rid of the rest. He then leapt away as they came bounded after him like a swarm of angry grasshoppers. It was certainly a frightening sight, for him anyways.

Alex sliced the air with his right arm and sent a wave of frost to freeze most of the Suikas up, then whipped his sword out across the air to shatter them to bits. But the remaining Suikas were easily able to reform into one normal sized oni regardless.

Alex leaned out and charged her head-on, ramming his sword into her extended hand and causing a blast of fire to obliterate the broken rocks behind her. With her hair flying wildly at her backside Suika squeezed onto Alex's blade and threw him high up.

She grew over a hundred feet tall to meet him face-to-face, but continued to raise her right arm towards the sky. Ripping the image of the moon from above, she pinned it to her palm and dunked it down towards Alex's head. He had to put everything had into a series of high-pressure slashes just to cut the image of the moon down, let alone worry about her palm afterwards.

He bailed out instead of risking any direct engagement, only to find her whipping her chains up to greet him. Alex heated his blade to volcanic levels and sliced through the one on the left and flew through it, turning around to then slice through the other one.

Suika shrunk down and leapt off one of the gigantic chains to get to the other, using it as a hammer to pound Alex to the ground. Alex's teeth bit down as he landed, and Suika's shadow showed him the onslaught was yet to end. He reached into his pocket and used the Gaia Temporis to give him a few extra seconds to escape, upon which he resumed time and swung his hands up, firing large fireballs into the sky that would pepper the ground and make it harder for Suika to see him.

But he, on the other hand, could feel her presence within the smoke and sprint straight for her. He caught her by surprise and rammed his left fist hard into her chest, but after she coughed the blow off she chuckled and punched the underside of his elbow with all her strength to crack and make it limp.

In retaliation Alex swung his sword down towards her left shoulder with all his might and managed to draw a bit of blood before she started turning into mist. Alex strained his eyes wide open and concentrated on her body, forcing the misty molecules to remain condensed together into her real form.

His heart pounded incredibly hard against his chest, and his face quickly turned red just to keep her stuck like this. Even she was a bit surprised he could manage this. His blade continued to cut down her chest, and with her eyes shut she mumbled humbly, "Ok. I'll let you have this one..."

Flashing a defiant smirk she bellowed, "But the rest of 'em will pick up the slack, dontcha worry about that! Cause Gensokyo...belongs to ALL of us!"

She purposely restrained her strength so Alex's blade would slice cleanly through the rest of her body. In choosing to go on her terms, she robbed him of any sense of triumph in overcoming these odds, cause once more he was reminded of the forces that were being rallied against him.

His body limped upright and looked up at the sullen sky, his body soaked by the rain and blood. He dropped his sword and fell onto his knees, then fell forward and pounded his fists on the ground. He struggled to think of the number of people he had killed, of the blood that Yukari would share with him in Hell...But now the number was impossible to deduce. Of course, any number beyond one was too great to begin with...

He reared his head back and closed his eyes to scream to the great beyond, "WHERE ARE YOU YUKARI?!"

His anguish rang out throughout all of Gensokyo, "COME OUT YOU COWARD! HOW MANY MORE LIVES ARE YOU GOING TO THROW AWAY BEFORE YOU'RE SATISFIED?!"

But as the blood washed off his body, he knew he was but a fool. No matter what his reason for doing so was, he'd taken all these lives of his own volition. Every life, and the smiles that came with them, were ripped away by him.

The one.

The **only**.

Phoenix of Destruction.

And that...had _always_ been his greatest fear...

 _Next Time: The Hound in the Shadows_


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11: The Fall of Pride**

The rain began to slow down, and would in seconds dry out completely. That was because the cracks in the barrier were growing to the point that it was tearing through the clouds in the sky. By Alex's rough estimate, Gensokyo had little more than an hour left before the barrier would break.

As for what happened beyond that, who could say?

" _I'm sure as hell not sticking around to find out..."_ He groaned as he levitated through the broken realm. With the thunder and lightning having ceased to be, it was a lonesome, eerie silence that kept him company on his journey to...

" _...Where am I even going?"_ He poked his head up somewhat and found himself gliding through the center of the Misty Lake towards the Scarlet Devil Mansion.

"Oh right. There..." He murmured in a matter-of-fact sort of mood. His body may as well have been sitting on a conveyor belt with how he was proceeding, for he hadn't a clue what motivated him to head to this place otherwise.

Was it to cling to that very, very small hope that the mansion's residents would hear him out? Certainly not. He knew that Remilia was too prideful to accept his request, even in light of the end of the world. Then perhaps he was just avoiding delaying the inevitable? Certainly possible. Even he wasn't certain of that himself.

His body was clean, but it didn't feel like it. In his eyes his skin was caked dry with blood, its crimson touch itching at his nerves and demanding that its cravings for more be satiated. His heart froze for a second and he found himself clutching his right arm tightly as it began to twitch.

"Stop it stop it stop it!" He gasped desperately as his heart sank to his stomach, which began to feel ill.

He slowly opened his eyes and looked to his arm. The shakiness died just a bit, but he felt it would only return the moment he let go. At this point however he could not run away. Doing so would just be spitting in the face of all those he had slain. Their deaths had to be worth something in the end.

"...I have to do this...Not for me, but for her..." Shina's well-being weighed heavily on his conscience and yet, helped to numb the shakiness. He let go of his arm and took in a deep breath.

" _Easy Alex...Once Yukari's gone, then she'll be safe...I'm sure of it."_ But as he let his breath go in a sigh he found himself clinging to his arm once again and looking down at the lake. He could barely see his reflection on the surface and found that what was reflected back had red irises and a livid smile.

"...Its not like she needs me anyways..."

"Indeed. How could a beauty ever truly love such a deplorable beast?" A bitter, spiteful cur of a voice spoke to the boy from not too far away, guiding his disdainful eyes upward towards the descent of a group of four.

Ran, Yuyuko and Youmu were the ones that were familiar to him on a personal level. But the fourth one, a young cat-like human with dark brown eyes and hair, wearing a green mob cap and red dress, was a newcomer to him on that front.

" _What was her name again?"_ He murmured, barely mustering up the urge to care as his spite dwelled solely upon the witch's loyal shikigami.

But the cat did have a name. One proudly given by her own master...

 **The Ill-Omened Troublemaker: Chen Yakumo**

Ran stood in front and center with her tails raised high like a peacock's feathers and a vengeful sneer on her face. Alex shifted his gaze briefly towards Yuyuko floating innocently with her arms held out and quickly drew his sword to activate his Phoenix Form.

The moment he finished transforming, his heart stopped racing fast and he turned to the kitsune, who raised the back of her hand to her chin and let out a hearty chuckle, "Oh there's no need to worry about her...For now. No. You are solely meant to be my _prey_ to claim, Phoenix of Destruction."

Alex sternly stared her down from across the foggy venue and asked, "Where is your master, mutt?"

"Too preoccupied to be sulling her hands on the likes of you," Ran slowly turned her hand around and rested it before her chest, displaying her sharp claws with a wicked smile that could frighten a dragon, "And furthermore, she needn't waste her energy this time when I am more than capable of handling you on my own."

"Tsk, big talk coming from the coward's pet," Alex narrowed his glare, "Cause by 'preoccupied' you mean she's too busy sending everyone to their deaths through paranoia and lies. _Don't you_?"

"...Fufufu." Ran tucked her hands into her sleeves and closed her eyes.

"What's so funny?"

"Are you referring to the tanuki's demise? Or perhaps the Moriya goddess' decision? Oh no no no, foolish Phoenix...That had nothing to do with Lady Yukari. Everyone of those events was orchestrated..." Ran raised her head up high and laid a hand firmly atop her chest, "By _yours_ truly."

Alex barely mustered up a look of surprise as he muttered, "What?"

"Oh, and it was such a simple matter too. My master sowed the seeds of discord in their hearts, so all I had to do was prey on their fears to move the pieces exactly as intended. Settling my grudge with that irritating tanuki was simply a **bonus**."

Alex hung his head with a frown as Ran continued to proudly drone on, "And with her gone the Buddhists and Taoists would fall to that shred of doubt that you were responsible. And with them gone, Kanako Yasaka would be given zero reason to ignore my 'warning'. After that it was simply a matter of supplying them with the tools necessary to fight you. And whether they won or not, it did not matter...The blood on your hands combined with an empty solitude...Would suffice enough to bring you to your knees at my mercy, Phoenix of Destruction!"

"..." Alex clutched his sword tighter and began to tremble.

"This was as Lady Yukari would have ordained it! As such...I did not require her permission to execute this plan."

"...And what about the barrier? Did **you** kill Reimu?" He asked with a hollow sounding voice.

"Alas...That was but an unfortunate, unforeseen circumstance," Ran gently hung and shook her head, but then raised it back up with a smile as she remarked, "But I need not concern myself with the end of Gensokyo. As long as Lady Yukari lives, so too shall we!"

"..." Alex's mouth began to open wide, revealing his teeth and gums in a gleeful smile, "Heeheehee..."

The soft laughter suddenly flooded out in a vicious cackle as Alex swung his head back and grabbed onto his forehead. His sounds of amusement could be heard all across Gensokyo as he dried his throat laughing as hard as he was.

By the time he was done his upper body hung over and he let out a few ragged gasps while lifting back up and glaring at Ran with an empty chill in his pupils. Keeping a shaky smile he rubbed the front of his hair back and said, "You know...I'm really glad you admitted this...You know why?"

Ran taunted him by responding, "No. Why?"

"Because now... _I'll actually be satisfied killing someone._ "

Ran bore her fangs in a gristly smile and twisted her body aside, putting her untoppable stature on full display as she whispered, "You're welcome to _try_ , Phoenix of Destruction. Death by my master's hand would've been a mercy... **I** will not be so kind."

"Hope your master scratches behind your ear in Hell, you **bitch**." Alex dispelled his sword and went charging at Ran with his right fist aflame. Leaning down the kitsune charged forth with the speed of a jet and met him partway with her right claws unfurled beside her face and her vicious smile reflected in his eyes.

 **THE NINE-TAILED FOX:** _ **RAN YAKUMO**_

Alex felt goosebumps on his cheeks as Ran's claw tips drew nearer. Sensing something amiss he pivoted his body to the right while still going for the punch. Ran twisted aside as well, resulting in the two twirling close together and ending up staring each other down on the opposite sides of where they started.

Alex quickly drew his sword and slashed a wave of fire down to trap Ran. The kitsune dug her claws in the center of it and tore straight through the middle, leaving the embers trickling to nothing in the air. She then summoned ghastly fox fire to her aid and flicked them all at the front of Alex's body, leaving a couple at her side.

He cut them down with a single spin of his blade, keeping it positioned upright to defend against Ran's vicious charge. She claws at his blade twice and then flung her fox fire past it towards his hips. Alex let his soul shield handle blocking that while he shoved the kitsune back a few inches and then lashed his blade out to consume her in a burning wave of fire.

She stood her ground with barely a black stain upon her silky tails and drew her claws aside. She twirled around towards Alex, using her tails as a bush to obscure where her claws would strike from next. Alex held his blade out and leapt over her, keeping the blunt edge in front of him at all times in preparation for her attack.

She waited for him to drop behind her to twirl around and lunge her right claw out, grabbing tightly around the blade's edge so she could force him in closer. Her other claw immediately plunged itself towards his chest with an assured degree of confidence on her face.

Alex grit his teeth and twisted aside, throwing his sword up out of her grasp and using the free hand to snag her hunter claw and then throw her way past him. She dug her feet into the air and backflipped over his head, swinging her right foot up to kick his sword away while using its blunt edge as a foothold to spring down at him.

Dragging his body back away as Ran's claws ripped through the atmophere with a dirty red scar, Alex swung his hands back and began charging flames in his palms. But then his vision became plagued by a bountiful swarm of bright, neon pink butterflies, courtesy of Yuyuko.

Alex kept his flames at the ready to the point the sphere threatened to overcome his hands and wildly shifted his gaze around. Sensing movement from the left he spun and fired the flames through the butterflies, only for it to immediately be cut down the middle by one of Youmu's blades.

The ghastly gardener held on for dear life as the flames swept past her sides and her distraction ultimately paid off as Ran was able to slip behind Alex undetected and thrust her right claw towards his neck. He turned around biting his teeth and nearly failed to summon his blade in time to block the assault.

The colliding attacks sent the butterflies to disperse in the wind, where upon then Ran took her other claw underneath Alex's blade and ripped it straight across his gut. His second shield was shredded through in an instant with a light amount of blood drawn from his abdomen.

Alex rammed his forehead into Ran's and paid back blood with blood upon her repulsion. The kitsune let the trickle of blood drip around her nose and eyes as her frenzied, slitted eyes stared deep into his shaken soul.

"Did you honestly think we'd let them have all of the Theorem?" She asked in a curt tone of voice.

Alex cared not. He quickly carved a flaming "X" into the air and sent it her way, then turned around to focus down Youmu. Ran quickly dispensed of the attack with a casual swipe upward and rushed in to the battle.

Youmu put her all into blocking just one of his slashes but was still repelled twenty feet for her troubles. She grabbed onto both of her blades as they remained lodged into their sheathes and narrowed her eyes on the sight of Alex. Her body was shaky. Sweaty. But most importantly, determined.

Before Alex could come after her again, Yuyuko provided back up from afar, using a couple giant butterflies that blew up into a swarm of smaller ones upon touching Alex's face. The repulsion activated his third shield and put him right in Ran's path.

But this time he could sense the kitsune's wild aggression drilling a hole through his neck and turned to meet her. He blocked one of her claws with his blade and dispelled it the second after to grab onto her wrist. He squeezed with the proportionate strength of a mountain-sized crab and started to crack her bones.

Ran twirled to her left and pulled the boy in closer, using her tails to cover his face. He retaliated by setting his body ablaze, but to his surprise she did not back off. Her tails were not so weak as to be alit like a bonfire.

And with that plan's failure, Alex let go of Ran's wrist and quickly pulled upright before her free claw could make mincemeat of his back. He threw one quick jab into her face and then swung down his other fist with greater force. She blocked that punch by crossing her arms and wound up being knocked back a good ten or so feet.

She immediately swung her arms down to her hips and jolted forward. Alex lined up another punch to knock her head clean off when, like her animalistic namesake would suggest she could do, she nimbly tucked her body down and swiped her claws clean through his defenses to cut his knees not once, but twice.

But at that close range there was no dodging his kick, which he supercharged with millions of volts of unbridled fury. The blinding flash that ensued parted the fog draping across the whole lake and left the surface water riddled with electricity for minutes.

Even Ran had to take a moment to recover from the attack, for it left her immobilized with static tingling across her skin. But instead of pursuing her during that moment of vulnerability, Alex turned his attention towards Youmu once more. Still positioned in the exact same pose as he left her, he wondered for a brief moment if there wasn't some greater purpose behind her steadfast refusal to budge.

But after the likes of Reisen, Nue and even Koishi, he has learned not to overlook the weak links in the chain. Before whatever plan the kitsune had concocted could go underway, Alex swung his right hand up and started turning the cold atmosphere against the swordsman.

The chill of a thousand arctic winters began covering over Youmu's body. Even in the Netherworld she had never experienced such insanely low temperatures, and her whole body quickly shivered. But she never let go of her blades, even as the sounds of the frost growing on her skin crackled like brittle wood.

A few embers surrounded Youmu and provided her heat. Not from Ran but from Chen, who in spite of being a childish shikigami, still had enough power residing inside of her to offset the winter's embrace. With a playful "Mrow!" the cat leapt straight over Youmu's head and tackled Alex's stomach with her whole body, bouncing right off his shield and landing with her hands pawing at the air like she was raring for a fight.

Alex remained stone-faced and immediately spun to the right as Ran came flying at her, as he expected. He swung his sword straight up to deflect her claw and then continued to spin to slam her gut with a kick. Ran brought her claws down the moment the sole of his shoe was planted and grabbed onto the bottom of his legs.

With a sinister smile the kitsune held on tight as Alex turned towards Youmu. Right on cue she let out a sigh of relief and dragged both her blades out of their sheathes, the sheer force behind it creating two massive, curved gashes.

The moment the blades were drawn and not a second more, Ran pulled her claws off Alex's legs and took another shield with her. Alex's heart was racing as he leapt into the air and tightly twisted his body around, keeping even the smallest hair out of the reach of those building slicing cuts.

Time seemed to crawl at half its usual pace as he hovered between the attacks, waiting for them to cease. From the corner of his eye however, he saw Youmu fly at him with a yell to fuel her advance. The next second after she stabbed one of her blades into his left arm, where it penetrated between the bone and wound up stabbing tip first into his chest.

" _Damn it all!"_ Alex kept the cries of pain entirely in his head, denying the kitsune the satisfaction. But that was fine with her, for she'd simply find another way to yank those screams free from his throat.

Upon Youmu's attack coming to an end Ran immediately ran in and punched the hilt of her blade to plunge the blade deeper into his body. It was fortunate for him that it failed to reach his lung. But not so fortunate that the pain was flaring in his body like a forest wildfire.

Ran's punch managed to separate him from the group for a moment. It was easy to pull his arm away and get the blade out of his chest, but the kitsune wasn't about to let it get any further than that. She came barreling in, using the same mystifying dance with her tails to keep him guessing where she'd strike from next, but this time surrounded herself in a cloak of foxfire.

Alex didn't waste time guessing. He raised his right hand up high and pounded the kitsune with a pocket of air, throwing her back and dispersing her tails and fire. She swung her tails up over her head and gathered the remaining embers to their tips.

Her whole body then became consumed in those flames, leaving just her hollow eyes visible amongst them. She charged straight for Alex, rolling around and around like a bowling ball to make the flames grow bigger. Once more punching through the flames with a bullet of air, he was shocked to find that its innards were hollow.

The flames were but a distraction to mask that she had briefly slipped into a gap of her own making and wound up reappearing right behind him. Instinctively turning as his hairs raised on the back, Alex swung his left arm up and summoned his blade to defend himself, but all Ran had to do was adjust the angle of her attack a couple degrees to punch the hilt of Youmu's blade and the pain did the rest.

Even the dullest part of the blade was rough on his nerves, much like sandpaper. As long as that blade remained lodged in his systems he could not rely on his shields to defend himself. And as easy as it would be to force it out with a thought, Ran was not giving him the opportunity.

Much like Yukari, Ran's mind calculated things down to the finest detail, allowing her to make adjustments on the fly. Combining that with speed matching a tengu's and strength matching an oni's, and Ran was by far the most dangerous threat he had faced today.

As the pain of that blade grew with his budging, Alex continued to swing his sword out towards Ran's stomach and managed to cut her a little bit. Ran chuckled at the feeling of blood dripping from her body as she sprawled her right claws out before Alex's face and remarked, "Your tenacity is to be commended..."

And as she grabbed onto the front of his face she grit her fangs and told him bluntly, "But I am as far beyond you as Lady Yukari is beyond **me**."

She curled her hand into a fist and the claw tips dug their way into Alex's skull. He bit his teeth down and gasped and panted to fight the pain. But even so, he still had the spunk in him to say, "Then...that's really not much to brag about, is it?"

He shakily smiled before concentrating on the steel of Youmu's blade. If he were to be stuck in this predicament, may as well use it to his advantage, no? He manipulated the steel to shoot out a pair of thinly needles towards Ran's face.

The kitsune grimaced and veered her head back, the needles scraping under her chin. Alex then swung his right hand up and grabbed her wrist to pull her hand off, scarring his head further. He jerked her arm down and heard a light snap from her elbow, then threw a punch into her chest as he let go to put some distance between them.

He then made a rush for Youmu's blade and ripped it out with a roar. The blood soaked blade dripped at his side as he clung onto it with a limp arm. Then he raised it towards the kitsune while drawing his other sword, remarking in a snide tone, "Thanks for the gift. Now _die_."

Ran swung her tails up by her face then turned and ran a few yards away in an instant. She threw some fox fire at the lake to rekindle the fog, and slipped into the veil.

Taking a moment to heal his arm up, Alex then slowly turned around and kept Youmu's sword raised. The moment he felt the faintest movement, he'd be poised to strike. The wind stirred from behind, then in front of him, then from the right, and then behind him again. Never once did the fog budge from its gentle touch.

Alex gripped the swords tight and chose to slash towards the left with Youmu's sword. The swordsman was there to clash with her own blade, her iron hot glare showing that she was determined to reclaim what she'd lost. The hairs on the back of Alex's hair raised, but he'd already positioned his own sword in a backhanded grip to block the incoming attack.

Yet...the impact was a little lighter than he was expecting. For it was not Ran who came to attack, but Chen.

" _That could only mean...!"_ Alex vigorously swung his head up with a grin, only for his lips to sink to a shaky frown as he was met by a blooming pink light from Yuyuko, who unfurled her giant glowing fan behind her and bombarded him with an absurd amount of lasers.

Though his shield could handle them, he knew that there was only spot left for the kitsune to strike from. Looking down, he saw Ran rise up from the lake's surface and ready her claws to cleave right through the front of his body.

With seconds to spare Alex had to act fast. He threw Youmu's sword up towards Yuyuko, forcing her loyal gardener to leave him to go retrieve it. Then he set his sword ablaze to repel Chen and free himself entirely. Finally he returned his blade to the proper grip and swung it all the way around from his back to smash into the front of Ran's claws as they neared his waist.

Ran's strength allowed her to keep pressing on and match Alex's force, but his blade was too powerful to be overcome regardless of how much effort she put into it. Alex thus pursued his advantage by blasting the kitsune point-blank with a flurry of hot ashes from his blade, temporarily scathing her eyes blind.

From there it was almost laughable how easy it was for Alex to send her into the lake with a single punch to the skull. Ran recovered in time to land atop the water, albeit she was forced to bend her knees down as far as they'd go just to manage this task.

She bit her fangs into a scowl and leapt straight back as Alex divebombed into the water to try and get her. The cold water splashing upon her face mitigated the sweat that was starting to form. The water bubbled at her feet and she quickly hopped back as it burst up like she'd just stepped on a mine.

Continuing to evade Alex's pursuit and explosions with hastily timed leaps, Ran quickly grew tired of playing the mouse and plunged her right claw into the briny deep. Her labor proved successful, as upon grabbing Alex's wrist she pulled him straight out.

He came flying out with his arms swung straight out from his shoulders and his eyes locked straight into hers. She tucked her hands into her sleeves and rapidly sent her tails towards him, each as powerful as a steel club. Alex allowed his body to be pummeled all across as he dove straight down and wrapped his glowing right hand into her face, slamming her down upon the water.

"You'll pay for everyone you led to their deaths! Mamizou! Miko! Byakuren! Sanae! ALL OF THEM WILL GET THEIR VENGEANCE ON YOU IN THE AFERLIFE!" The glow in Alex's hand broke apart and released a massive explosion upon the kitsune, sending her skipping and tumbling along the water's surface like a stone.

Eventually she landed upon her feet and skid to a stop, readying her claws for Alex's vicious charge. The boy wound up in front of her before she blinked with his fist drawn back and his heart visibly pounding against his chest. But as his fist came bearing down she grabbed onto it with both her hands and left the force he unleashed to part the water at their feet for half a mile across.

"Their blood isn't on my hands now is it?" She sneered while squeezing her claws into his hand.

"Blameless to the end," Alex grumbled with a scowl, "I guess your master's got to be proud of you for _something_."

Ran's eyes narrowed and she twisted his fist to the right with little exertion. Alex grit his teeth and pulled his fist free, only for Ran to ram him in the gut with his shoulder. His seventh shield popped but she immediately slashed her claw up to tear it off.

Alex broke through the rising wall of water his punch created and landed on the lake's surface. Ran barreled right through the water and twisted her body around, the perfect way her tails conformed to her shape without interfering with her movements both a sight of majesty and wonder.

Before Alex could raise his blade she got right in and scraped her claws down across his gut, deepening part of the earlier wound. Alex slammed her blade down on her arm and hit her with a point-blank explosion to knock her away.

She left on her own terms, rolling with a backflip as her tails cushioned most of the blast. She landed upon the water and went rolling right after him, unfurling her form to ram both her legs into his gut. Blood spit from his mouth as he went flying into a three-layer orange pentagram she put in his path to stop him.

Ran surrounded herself with a ring of fox fire and flew in close, slicing Alex across the chest with enough force to keep him rebounding off the seal, filling the interim of those attacks with whiffs of her flames. Alex rammed his elbows into the seal and tackled her in the gut to drag her underwater.

Having the better ease of movement underwater Alex was able to hammer away at her face for a good few seconds until outside forces intervened.

Youmu made the one-in-a-million shot, with Yuyuko's help, granted, and managed to throw her sword in a perfectly straight line into the water to harpoon Alex through the back of his gut. Ran's eyes sparked to life and she grabbed Alex by the neck and dragged him out of the water with the both of them completely drenched.

But where this was but a nuisance to Ran, it was a boon to Alex. He swung his arms out and grabbed onto her hips and started freezing the water over, quickly covering her body in a sheet of ice that lessened her strength. As it got to the point where her eyes were the only thing moving, Alex pressed down tighter on her solidified sides and prepared to shatter her with a single quake.

"LADY RAN!" A youthful cry hollered out before Chen clobbered Alex in the back of the skull with her whole body to break his concentration.

The moment he let go Ran's eyes glowed with the intensity of a blue sun and she thawed her whole body by surrounding in fox fire. Then she returned the favor upon her captor by squeezing tighter around Alex's neck and barreling high into the sky at mach speeds.

She rammed him into a ten-layered seal, breaking through half of them and cracking the rest. She flipped away from him and grabbed onto the tip of Youmu's blade, ripping it straight through his abdomen and allowing the blood and viscera to splash upon her delicate clothes.

She flung the blade back to Youmu who was just a few feet behind her and swiped her right claws towards Alex's neck at breakneck speeds. Alex lashed his mouth out and chomped down onto her thumb, getting his tongue scraped in the process but forcing her to relent with a mild look of disgust.

Alex spit the blood from his tongue into her left eye and then sped that way to take advantage of her blind spot. Ran turned to keep up only for him to turn on the dime and smashed the front of her face with his fist. She lost a couple teeth and coughed up a bit of blood but felt no worse for the wear. The blood that trickled down her face just made her eyes all the more ferocious.

Alex raised his other fist up to strike but was bombarded in the back by Yuyuko's lasers. He turned around and instead used that hand to fire a massive flame beam at her. Youmu got in its way and cut it down with a single stroke, keeping her back pointed towards him all the while.

Ran went in for the attack only to have her face assaulted by the front of Alex's left palm, which he used to stall for the few seconds he needed to wind up his fist and plow it into her chest. After repelling the kitsune Alex swung his arms out and charged them full of electricity.

He clapped them together like the thundercloud in the midst of a superstorm and sent lightning flying across the skies in all directions. Ran batted them away with the back of her hands with a minor singed mark to their names and then lunged at Alex.

He swerved aside and kneed her in the gut followed by slamming his fists into the center of her spine, delivering the force of a city-leveling earthquake upon her. The kitsune held up surprisingly well, only suffering mild tremors as she clawed viciously at Alex's gut from the side.

She managed a couple wounds before she let go, but it was unwise to allow her any further blows considering the damage done already. Pulling away from this scuffle Alex swung his right hand out and knocked her back with a bubble of compressed air.

Chen rammed into the back of his skull from behind but this time around Alex twirled around and punched her hard in the face for her foolishness. She fell out of the sky but was caught by her master, who helped her back up while quietly reprimanding her for being reckless.

Alex drew his sword and attacked her with a flurry of cuts. Ran used her tails to block her attacks while providing an opening down below for Chen to slip free. Then with that distraction gone the kitsune slips her hand past Alex's blade and grabs onto his wrist.

His shields have returned, but did little good against her claws, which tore deep through it and his skin as she dragged her hand back. Alex quickly switched his blade over to his other hand and cut Ran up the chest as she reeled back. Youmu flew in and stabbed one of her blades into Alex's right elbow, limping his arm the moment she pulled out.

Alex swung his body to the right and fried her body with a cone of flame made brief thanks to Ran clawing up the length of his left arm with a few vicious cuts. He turned to attack, her only response being to punch his sword out of his hand and hoist him high by plunging her claws into his chest, taking care not to hit his heart.

When the urge to resist seemed inevitable, Youmu put an end to that by stabbing both her blades into Alex's shoulders with all her might. The rest of Alex's body squirmed as he pushed his right hand towards his pockets. Ran swiped one tail so quickly towards the pocket that her hairs became as sharp as blades, allowing her to cut the pocket and send the Gaia Temporis plummeting towards the lake.

"Not this time. No longer shall that accursed wretch of a stone trouble my master." Ran said while twisting her claws deeper into Alex's chest muscles. The squishing, gurgling sounds of his innards being pureed made Youmu's face turn pale.

Ran brought her face inches away from his and snickered. With a delighted display of ecstasy the kitsune rubbed her prideful endeavors in deep, "I don't care where you come from, or what you are. You are just one person. Even you have your limits, and today you have finally met your superior, who pushed you to those limits."

Ran's hands suddenly felt heavier and she looked down to see that Alex had transformed the blood leaking onto her hands into a pair of diamond cuffs. With a chuckle she looked him in the eyes and sneered, "You can only delay the inevitable so long, Phoenix of Destruction."

"...Doesn't matter how you impede me you stupid mutt..." Alex slowly opened his mouth, "As long as your master lives...I **will** always find a way to succeed. Again. And again..."

He opened his mouth all the way, going beyond what should be humanly possible for him as the Gaia Temporis glowed and started to disappear down below, "AND AGAIN!"

Ran looked down and bit her teeth. Frightened she turned back and yelled, "LADY YUYUKO! KILL HIM NOW!"

The ghostly princess widened her eyes and then nodded, concentrating her power towards the vulnerable boy. Youmu resonated with the panic in the air and twisted her blades diagonally and tried to cut through Alex's shoulders towards his neck while Ran pulled her claws free before she got in Yuyuko's way.

But the Gaia Temporis reached its destination, as Alex chomped his frontmost teeth down onto its top and bottom, nearly breaking his jaw in the process. With their connection re-established in the most boorish manner possible, Alex was able to stop time...

Able to catch his breath nice and slow, Alex observed his surroundings. Youmu's blade were centimeters from his neck, and had taken off part of his shoulders in the process of getting there. After spitting out the Gaia Temporis and letting it rest upon his weak left hand he concentrated on the Misty Lake and closed his eyes. By absorbing the lake's elemental energy his cut off flesh reattached to his shoulders and sealed back into place.

He was able to patch up the wounds in his chest and gut and recover the feeling in his arms. And now that he was feeling better, he had but one thing left to do. He tucked the Gaia Temporis in his other pocket and summoned his sword into his mouth, noticing the deathly fog that represented the manifestation of Yuyuko's power was floating between her and Ran.

He stared down at the fleeing kitsune and let time resume as he dove his head down and plunged the blade into her gut. The kitsune gasped as blood spilled from her chest. By using the kitsune's body as cover, Alex rammed her into the path of Yuyuko's deathly touch and she died without being able to hiss a word of vile intent towards the boy.

From there the ghostly princess slowly widened her eyes and then closed them with a smile as Alex plunged her blade through Ran's hollow corpse and stabbed her deep in the chest. He pulled away and grabbed his blade in hand, then ripped it free by slicing through the left side of their bodies.

"You'll satisfy the vengeful spirits of the dead as an appetizer..." Alex gave the kitsune one last insult before turning around and saying with his head hung low, "But let them know that _both_ their main courses will be joining them soon enough..."

The two's bodies fell into the frozen depths, leaving it impure with their blood. He then looked up and saw the survivors, Chen and Youmu, shaking at the sight of him. He could only imagine what they saw upon looking at him. The tears were already welling up in the cat's eyes, and it was almost clockwork what was about to happen next.

Alex swung his sword up beside his left shoulder and then dashed forward. He cut them down with a single stroke across both their chests, saving them the chance to know the futility of trying. He then lowered his hand and dispelled his sword as they fell into the water after their masters, feeling only the mildest satisfaction out of putting Ran down.

"...She was only a lapdog after all," He murmured, "The real criminal is the one tugging at her leash."

He raised his head towards the sky with empty eyes and murmured, "Isn't that right, Yukari?"

He didn't know what he was expecting to happen. Even a giggle from her, no matter how malicious, would have meant a lot. But if she was not going to come, then his only recourse was to try...Try and ask the denizens of the Scarlet Devil Mansion to aid him.

"...Speaking of futility..." He coughed up a mild chuckle and sigh before slowly making his way over to the mansion, draining the lake of its energy to fully recover himself...

 _Next Time: Ascending into Naught_


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12: The Fall of Fate**

By the time Alex had reached the Scarlet Devil Mansion he had drained the Misty Lake down to the very last drop. He figured, since the world was coming to the end, it would be a waste of resources if he left anything behind. He knew going forward that he'd need all the strength he could get.

He stopped down at the front gates. Unsurprised by the lack of Meiling, he reached his hands up and concentrated on the gate. He pulled it apart, contorting the whole thing into two twisted rods that let out a high-pitched wail. This would be his greeting to the vampire and her subordinates.

Just as well, he'd already expected that the moment he stepped through those front doors everyone of importance would be waiting for him at the foyer. If Hecatia kept up her end of the deal and managed to snag every Fairy in Gensokyo, then not even the maids would be around to pester him.

So as he dragged his feet across the ground he stepped up to the front doors and pressed his knuckles against the front. It slowly inched open with that gentle tap, allowing him to brush his body between the gap that formed and enter at last.

Without a word or a wisp of breath to tell him to do so, Alex looked straight ahead and saw his opposition gathered squarely in the foyer's center. Remilia led the charge in the front, naturally, and Sakuya and Meiling guarded her from her left and right respectively. Patchouli and Koakuma leviated a good ways behind the vampire, the little demon cuddled to her master's hip. The big surprise was the appearance of Alice Margatroid, who despite being on familiar terms with the librarian, looked out of place here.

Remilia wore her fangs with a lion's ferocity and floated high enough off the ground that she felt as imposing as an empress.

Alex swung his mighty sword up high alongside his shoulder and stared forward without blinking once. The vampire warmly smiled back and chuckled as the boy told her, "So this is your decision, Remilia?"

"Never been the running type!" She boldly declared, "If any fool throws themselves in my path, then rest assured...I shall knock 'em down!"

"You could've made a name for yourself if you'd chosen to fight Yukari. Humans and Youkai alike would sing your praises until the end of time for slaying that witch..." Alex remarked with a dull, tired sigh.

"Fufufu...! Humans cower in fear of my shadow! Youkai howl my praise throughout the endless night!" Remilia spread her arms and wings and pursed her lips until only her fangs shone through, "It shall be the world! Nay! The universe! That shall sing in appraisal of Remilia Scarlet, conqueror of the Phoenix of Destruction!"

Alex narrowed his eyes and held down his swords' seven triggers, and upon emerging from the golden flames wreathed in a coat of crimson fire he said daringly in a stoic voice, "Then come. Conquer me...REMILIA SCARLET!"

He leapt into battle without a second though, and so too did the vampire. She swooped down from her lofty perch and met his charge with the full force of her body put into her attack. She rammed head-first into his sword as he swung down, then dropped right to the ground in recoil.

She pushed her cap down in one hand and its shadow hid her smile before she flung herself at him once more at breakneck speeds.

She scraped her claws up his first shield then quickly dove and rose to batter him back into the door. Alex raised the blunt edge of his blade and covered it in permafrost, causing the back of her hands to stick to it when she dared to attack one more time.

She pulled her hands off, skin and all, and swung her right hand high towards the sky as she flew away. In a second she coalesced crimson, devilish light into a small spear and thrust it towards his head.

Alex shifted his body to the left and watched as the spear punctured the door. Taking the battered splinters and flinging them at Remilia's face to force her arms to protect it, Alex then charged straight at her and drew his sword to impale through both limbs and face in a single strike.

Meiling leapt straight in his way and wrestled his wrist in both her hands. Her surprise attack weakened his strength and allowed her to toss him back first onto the ground. She then quickly landed behind his head and swept her right leg up, creating a rainbow ring that carried Alex into the foyer's back wall.

His body cracked it and he fell to the ground on his feet, feeling but a tiny kink in his neck as he turned back around. He swung his hands together at his right and immediately had enough flames to consume the whole group in a single attack.

He set them loose in a mighty beam, and as the next in line to come to her friend's aid Patchouli dived in the front of the flames and raised her tome towards the center of it. With a snap of the fingers the flames shrunk to a funnel the size of her hand and were swallowed up in her tome, leaving only the hot winds to blow against her.

With a smile that'd make Remilia proud, Patchouli thrust her right pointer finger out and snapped once more. A broken flicker of red light emerged from the tome and then swiftly turned blue as she sent flames of a similar color hurtling back towards Alex.

There was no telling what a magician like her had up her sleeve, so Alex cut out the risks and hopped away from the flames. He landed and found himself accosted by a ring of knives pointed at his waist that he didn't know how he hadn't sensed.

Whether he ducked or flew the knives would scrape his next shield guaranteed. Making the decision to duck, Alex fell into Remilia's domain as the vampire charged in close and slashed her claws towards his neck, forcing his head back up.

His body wound up directly in the path of a dark sphere fired by Patchouli, which peeled his second AND third shields off in an instant. He widened his eyes and attempted to run straight at the magician before this could be repeated.

Yet at her diminuitive size, Remilia was easily able to use her monsterous strength to swing her claws at Alex's legs and trip him up, putting him in the prime position for Meiling to close the distance and punch him through the newly formed hole in the wall.

Alex dug his feet into the ground and looked at his surroundings. Ripping the acryllic paintings off with a thought he flung them one at a time towards Meiling to gauge her response. She chopped through the first painting with a grimace towards the property damage she caused, then smashed her fist through the center of the second one.

Right on cue Alex squeezed and turned his right fist around, twisting the metallic frame around Meiling's wrist so hard that he was able to turn the rest of her arm. She fought to the tooth and nail to resist his might, but this was not something that would be solved by her alone.

A few knives scraped Alex's fourth shield from behind and he glanced back, watching as Sakuya slipped silently into the shadows of the hall. He fell for her taunt by spinning back and firing a fireball wide enough to char the walls and ceiling of the hall, allowing Alice to slip a couple puppets down and use their tiny blades to cut Meiling's arm free of the twisted shackle.

Alex caught this happening from the corner of his eye and sent another fireball out to incinerate the puppets. But to counteract this move, Alice herself stepped in and whipped her puppet's strings into a whirlwind around her and Meiling with but a flick of the wirst. The wires were so fine and sharp that they cut the fireball down to its base embers.

But with his fourth shield still up Alex had little fear as he leapt towards the two and dragged the strings against the front of his body. Alice waved her hand out and summoned a doll three times as big as her behind them, using its lance to force Alex back a few feet.

He quickly overpowered the lance's push and grabbed its tip in one hand, ripping it free of the doll's grasp and hurtling it through the mansion walls to the outdoors. Alice winced and held her arms close together, commanding the giant doll to pick her and Meiling up and retreat.

"Not on my watch!" Alex yelled as he dove straight for the doll and threw a punch with all his strength. A barrier rose in his path, his collision sending a ripple throughout that nearly broke it apart. Alex then slowly eased back and saw that the way behind had been sealed off as well.

" _They're just stalling for time..."_ It was so easy to deduce that it felt like an insult to his intelligence. He looked to the stairs on both sides and concentrated heavily on them to drain them of their elemental energy and break down his escape route.

But even in the face of his might, they didn't give up even a molecule of power to him. Alex raised his brows and muttered under his breath, "This shit again...?"

He closed his eyes and blasted open the way out with a large fireball and quickly flew through the smoke before Patchouli could contain him again. He rose above the others and stared straight for Patchouli, asking in a loud, blunt voice, "And what were you planning to do after you caged me? Huh?!"

The librarian laid her tome open before her waist and planted her right hand down on the center of the pages as they glowed with black and purple light. Her response was kept to a short muttering of "This", letting her actions resolve the remainder of the question.

"Darkness Sign 'Oblivion's Abyss'!"

The air surrounding Alex pressed downward with darkness mixed in it. As it felt like the fabric of reality was being squished and torn apart, Alex found himself grounded in a second as darkness rained down across his body, melting away his fifth shield.

Alex grit his teeth and dragged himself through the darkness, his body slowly but surely rising fully upright as he was about to take his first step out of the darkness. Patchouli swiped her hand off the book and the motion turned the pages towards somewhere near the end.

"Don't bother Patchy! I got this!" Remilia re-entered the battle after a mild absence by diving straight over her librarian's head and ramming Alex head-on. His sixth shield came to his rescue but couldn't stop the vampire from smashing him into the wall.

Patchouli dispersed the darkness and reached for the right part of her book. The pages glowed bright like the sun and flooded out enough power to raise Patchouli's hair around behind her.

Remilia battered Alex's body off the wall with the mightiest claw strikes she could muster, steadily deepening and widening the cracks throughout it. Alex got over the initial shock of being struck and drew his sword, cutting it straight down towards the vampire's head.

She flashed a smirk and broke apart into a swarm of bats that quickly flew behind Alex and reformed into their original state. Remilia came back swiping her claw down, but with a swift spin Alex was able to cut her hand clean off and send blood spewing from her arm.

From that blood she was able to easily reconstruct the hand in seconds and still have time to rapidly swing her claws across Alex's body. His sixth shield was still up and ready to be his aid, making him wonder what exactly the plan was here.

"Still need a little more time..." Alex heard being whispered from behind.

When he saw Patchouli hard at work on her spell book he quickly rammed the blunt edge of his sword in the path of Remilia's claws and blasted her with hot ashes. He spun around and started to dive towards the librarian, only to feel an intense bloodlust suddenly appear before his face.

Sakuya arrived and stabbed one knife towards his face, causing him to stop and raise his sword to block it. With her eyes glowing red Sakuya muttered, "You shall remain right here, as Lady Remilia has requested."

Remilia dove into Alex's back and disrupted the grip of his sword, forcing him to hold it against his chest. Sakuya scraped her knife against the side of his shielded face and let go as Alex swung his sword up to try and cut her arm off.

Remilia grabbed onto that knife and took swipes at Alex's wings, which were also protected. Sakuya surrounded herself with a ring of knives and spun them around, grinding up against Alex's shield at point-blank range.

Alex tried to punch her in the gut but she vanished and reappeared a few feet away in the blink of an eye without her knives. Remilia flipped over Alex as he spun around to cut her, then rammed her feet down into the top of his skull to knock him a few feet down.

"Remi! Now!" Patchouli declared, and right before her master's name had been full spoken Sakuya grabbed onto her and warped her down to the floor with a parasol in hand to shade her from the front.

Alex swung his sword out with all his might, striking Patchouli, Meiling and Alice with a large wave of fire and scarring the ground black at their feet. But then bright light collapsed upon him from above in the form of a miniature sun, pressing him against the bottom of its mighty gravitation pull and dragging him straight to the ground.

The sun's burst was contained within the space its circumference was, but now there was a large hole in the mansion's roof that let the grim moonlight shine through. Sakuya shook the embers off the parasol like it was a spot of rain and folded it up, letting Remilia stand tall and proud with a smirk crawling up the right of her face.

"Excellent work Patchy, Sakuya! Now, go on. Leave him to me!"

Sakuya nodded and disappeared completely in silence, while Meiling and Alice ran for the hole in the foyer. Patchouli remained behind for a moment to warn her friend, "Remember, once you get that last shield off-"

"Yeah yeah, I got a minute. That's more than enough time!" Remilia folded her arms and fluttered off the ground as her fiend parted from sight.

Alex rose from the solar flames sweating but unharmed. His wings dredged up the bright yellow embers and shook them to the sky as they rose high above his head. He stepped out onto the searing black floor, dragging his sword behind him on the ground so he could swing it right up towards Remilia's face and mutter, "Done playing games, vampire?"

"I got you all to myself now, Phoenix of Destruction. How misfortunate, for you." Remilia replied with a smirk.

"Fate's not on your side today. Only one person will be leaving this mansion alive today."

"Do you think I fear death?!" Remilia proclaimed triumphantly into the silent night as she grit her fangs and raised a bloody claw towards Alex, "But what about _you_?"

Alex squinted his eyes and gripped his sword tighter as he swung it down by his hip. After a moment of silence he raised a smirk and said, "You started off as first final boss of the series, and now you're the last of them alive. There's a bit of irony there, wouldn't you say?"

Remilia raised her brows and her smirk grew wider, "I don't know what the hell you're talking about, but Final Boss? That sounds like a title greatly befitting the Mistress of the Night!"

Alex stared her down and swung his sword up to send a wave of fire hurtling across the ground. Remilia zipped to the left of it than barreled after Alex, bouncing up and down across the ceiling and floor to mesmerize him into confusion.

Alex stabbed the ground and summoned a ring of lances to impale through to the ceiling, inadvertently impaling through Remilia's right arm as she tried to twist away. She ripped her arm free of the lance and slammed down to the ground,

She pulled her hand back and condensed red light into a spear three times as long as she was tall and threw it as though it was as light as a stick. She ran alongside it, waiting for Alex to take his sword and cut the spear in half to strike.

Alex was able to quickly cut through the spear and then lower his sword to block her uppercutting claw. Remilia grit her teeth and scraped her bare nails across the blunt edge of his sword, hoping to blind him with the sparks she raised.

Instead Alex refused to play along with her little game and increased the heat of the sparks to the point that they were as hot as flames, then dropped them right onto her face. Remilia made a hasty retreat and scraped her claws against the ground, summoning a glowing red glyph to her feet.

"Can you keep up?!" She cried out before launching herself straight at him faster than any known human-made jet.

Alex slashed his sword up and deflected her travel past his body, then spun around and met her when she jerked back around for a second strike. She kept coming at him from multiple angles but he could keep the pace as long as he stood completely still.

" _She's no tengu..."_ Alex dully remarked before ending this farce of an attack with one quick, mighty swing to swat Remilia out of the air.

She spun around a couple times and shook her body like she'd just accidentally ran head first into a wall. If nothing else, Alex could compliment her tenacity.

"You should be paying more attention!" As Remilia boasted that fact without fear Alex looked down and saw that the glyph she summoned a moment ago had crawled under his feet.

"Shit..." He murmured as he snapped the lances surrounding him in half and leapt out of the glyph's range as it unleashed a towering scarlet cross. He turned his back to Remilia, an almost costly sleight of hand, for the vampire wouldn't hesitate to dive down and take a swing at her prey.

Alex swung his body back and rammed down onto the ground, narrowly avoiding her descent by the skin of his teeth. He took the broken lances and threw them in her path, impaling her through the stomach and right arm. Her endurance allowed her to rip them free and feel no worse for the wear, and in fact she weaponized the lances by coating them in energy and tossing them straight back towards their master.

Alex widened his eyes and stalled the spears halfway through, twirling them back around to go after Remilia. She spun her body around and slashed them in half by swiping her claws down in an "X", removing them from the battle for good.

She stared passed her cross arms with beady eyes and a blissful smile. The succor of the night's crimson hue gave her strength to persist regardless of everything could throw at her.

But he could not understand what drove her beyond that as he rose to his feet and swung his sword to repel her charge. She hadn't the strength of the onis, or the speed of a tengu. Meiling was no better in that regard. Patchouli and Alice's magic was strong, but nothing compared to the likes of Ran or even Sanae. And while Sakuya's loyalty was undying, she hadn't any tricks that'd surprise him for long.

The odds were entirely against the mansion folk's favor, and yet they still chose to fight him. Alex battered Remilia's claws as she kept swinging wildly at his body, trying to force his last shield into the open. He set his whole body ablaze and swung his sword down at the ground, knocking up a plume of fire that singed off a lot of Remilia's skin.

She just. Kept. Coming.

After diving at his body and failing to manifest the shield one more time, Remilia swooped over his head and struck him in the back with a kick. Alex summoned a wall of rock from the ground to meet her foot and give himself a second to run forward away from her.

He swung around and lashed up flames at the rock, turning it into a wall of magma that covered her foot and slowly burned it off. She swung her stiffened leg down and pulled her claws out alongside her face. She created a large spear and thrust it at Alex's face, which he promptly swerved away from and swung his sword up to summon a pillar of frost from the ground below her.

She flew away from its frosty thrall and dove down at Alex's feet, bouncing off the ground towards the left the moment it seemed she would attack. He stabbed his sword at the ground to stop her and immediately shifted his gaze to the left as she came curving in for an attack.

She rammed her whole body into the side of his face and forced the seventh shield up, with Alex frying her down to the skin with electricity in retaliation. But the damage had been done, and when Remilia pulled away and left her frayed skin to heal she wore the brightest smirk imaginable and declared, "Now lets see if God bleeds red!"

Alex charged at her with his sword burning bright hot. He swung at her with broad strokes that set the whole foyer ablaze in seconds. Remilia evaded the strikes with agile bursts of speed, zipping between the flames and waiting her time out in bliss.

Alex stamped his right foot on the floor and made the ground rise at her feet, throwing the vampire smack dab into his face to keep the seventh shield going. He then impaled her through the chest with his sword and held her up at the rising flames.

She pushed her body further down the sword and grabbed hold of his face with both her claws, using all her strength in a single shove to slam him to the ground. She then pulled herself free and flipped back onto the ground. The flames were getting higher and causing parts of the roof to collapse upon her location, but even with the burn marks searing her nerves she never felt more alive.

"Eh, Sakuya can fix it up later..." She muttered with a shrug before throwing herself through the flames after Alex.

The time was ripe, and she slashed her claws down past his sword and cut him through his chest. Alex winced as blood sprayed from the wounds onto her face, satiating her vampiric hunger as she licked it off her lips and smiled.

Alex whipped his sword out and bashed Remilia straight through the flames into the hole in the wall. She landed with grace and bridged her fingers before her chest, grinning and raising her brows to entice the boy to follow. She then spun around and zipped into the darkness as Alex rocketed past the collapsing foyer in hot pursuit.

Not long after entering the winding halls Alex found himself having trouble navigating them. They were tight, and maze-like in structure. They were deceptively long for how the mansion looked on the outside, but that was easily chalked up to Sakuya working her magic on the inside.

But he was able to keep a bead on the speedy little vampire, for while she was more agile he remained the faster of the two and could correct any errors in the blink of an eye. He raised his hand down a particularly expansive hall and prepared a fireball to cover the whole way through. But as Remilia started behaving oddly by zipping up and down in a condensed space, Alex suspected there was a trap afoot.

The glow of his flames revealed a series of tightly woven together web of strings between the walls, each so sharp that even he would be diced into mincemeat if he got close. He stopped at the very edge of the closest string and watched as Remilia broke off into a room on the left.

As it just so happened, there was a door to the left of him as well. It was almost _too_ perfect how well things lined up this way. Nevertheless, he smashed the door down with a quick and charged forth into the mansion's library, where there were thousands upon thousands of books stacked up on shelves arranged in a labryinth like manner.

" _So this is where the others ran off too...Where are you all hiding?"_

The books sprung to life from their confines and opened wide, assaulting Alex with multiple varied spells ranging from searing electricity to throwing chunks of orichalcum. He swung his arm up to deflect them only to be attacked from his left as well.

He rushed past the initial bookshelves only for more to take their place. The whole library was filled to the brim with magic. Even someone as magically inept as Alex could sense that. The purpose behind these pesky attacks became evident when he felt movement charging at him from behind, and Meiling managed to pool all her energy into a single crippling blow to his back.

Alex keeled over on his knees in a second and slammed his palms against the ground as his spine flared up in agony. He squeezed his fingers into a fist and smashed the ground to cause a brief earthquake, tripping Meiling up a little as he got up and turned around, throwing a punch square into her face.

Though he smashed her through the nearest bookshelf, his spine flared in pain even hotter than before and his arms quickly limped to his hips. Some knives cut through his legs and arms while he caught his breath, followed by more of the books coming to life to attack him with magic.

He spread his wings to cover himself from the magic and then charged on ahead after Meiling, who was barely getting up after that harrowing blow. With blood dripping down her face she assumed a stance and parried Alex's punch with the back of her right hand, followed by grabbing his wrist with the other and giving it a tight twist as she threw him over her head.

A wall of dolls had been formed where he was sent flying, each of them managing to prod into his back with their tiny lances. Their pokes, akin to the feeling of a cacti's needles, worsened the pain in his spine whenever they struck it. Alex spun back and beheaded most of the dolls with a kick, throwing the rest to the wayside with the flames he kicked up.

Then his extended leg was pierced through by a couple knives, leading him to grimace as he pulled it back in and sped away from the chaos. He dropped down next to Meiling and swung his right fist back towards her face, which she blocked with her arms crossed sturdier than the toughest of walls. But Alex then spun the rest of his body around and delivered a high-voltage punch to her gut, weakening her strength immensely and thus causing his blow to mangle most of her insides as she was sent hurtling back, bleeding from the mouth.

His arms were swung out, vulnerable to the ensnaring grasp of Alice's many, many strings. She dug the strings in deep and drew some blood before Alex burned them off and swung back to face her. She swiped her arms around and guided her dolls to ambush him from the sides.

They gracefully danced in the air around his body and took potshots at his limbs while Patchouli's boobytrapped books kept on attacking. Alex swung his arms out and set loose a ring of fire to start burning down the bookshelves, but like an automated sprinkler system a storm of rain dropped from the ceiling to put those flames out.

Alex summoned his sword and stabbed it into the ground, the amber blade consumed with lightning that spread out through the rain in an instant. Yet in that instant, Patchouli was able to have a countermeasure prepared to contain the lightning within Alex's space.

"Cut it out!" He yelled before slashing his sword twice violently to the right, slicing the bookshelves down with compressed air. As the shelves slid down Patchouli hovered in place with the pages of her tome constantly turning.

Alex swung his left hand out and pulled Alice in close with a vacuum of air, blasting her with a point-blank fireball while having his full attention on the librarian. He flew straight at her and she summoned a series of basketball sized suns to detonate in his path. His skin, blistering red from the heat, wasn't a big enough detriment to halt his advance.

But Remilia? She was another story.

She came swooping down from out of nowhere and dragged Alex to the floor, digging her claws into his shoulders until his arms dripped red with blood. Then she jerked back around and threw him through a couple bookshelves. A relatively minor cost, even from Patchouli's perspective.

Patchouli took aim with a glyph poised perfectly towards Alex's position and fired a series of dark spheres. Alex spun around and around, slicing them down with his sword while building up the heat to send a crescent wave of fire her way.

Remilia clawed the flames down and swung her right hand up. Now she wasn't going to create any old spear. This one was bigger, dwarving most suburban houses from the Outside World. It was nastier, enough to make Elder Gods tremble in fear. It was brighter, its scarlet hue able to overpower the rising sun. Many have heard its name cry out in the storms of yore. A similar weapon was wielded by the All-Father, Odin, in his hayday. Its name?

"Go...GUNGNIR!" Remilia cried out in pride as the massive spear was tossed out a second later.

But not only did Alex not bow to its might, he attacked it head on with a blade no bigger than half of him. He grinded its impenetrable amber against its scarlet tip and felt the energy pierce his skin from all-around as he broke it down bit by bit. He flared his body up to full strength, burning the air with immense heat.

Patchouli started coughing as the heat got to her weakened lungs, but tried to hold on for her friend's sake. Alex started cutting into the spear, slicing through inches and then entire feet at a time until he suddenly slashed the mighty Gungnir in twine and felt as its halves puncture through the walls of the mansion. He gasped and sweated while Remilia dove at him still full of vigor.

He swung his blade up and clashed with her claws a couple times while she managed to slip past his defenses and cut into his tendered up limbs. Alex angrily roared and exploded with fire, launching Remilia higher up and allowing him to speed forward at Patchouli.

The librarian scrambled to create a barrier but Alex punched through it and hit her square in the head, knocking her far, far down to the floor. Remilia tackled him in the back before he could deliver the killing strike and dragged him opposite of where the librarian had fallen. Along the way they passed by Sakuya in the shadows, who gripped her pocketwatch before her wrist while counting down the seconds in a whisper.

"Ten...nine...eight..."

Alex forced Remilia off his stomach and elbowed her into a wall. She let out a brief gasp but then defiantly swiped at his face.

"Seven...six...five..."

The vampire sprang at him but Alex punched her back to the ground on her rear. He then flicked his left fingers up and caused giant sawblades to rise from the ground and slice Remilia's arms clean off from the shoulders. He then pressed the dull edges against her bleeding sockets while coldly remarking, "You can't regenerate if there's no room for your body parts to regrow."

"Four...three...two..." Sakuya's hand wound tightly around the watch, causing it to shake.

Remilia bit her teeth down in fury for the first time but still wrenched her body up, trying to squeeze her way out. Alex shackled her legs to the ground with spiked cuffs, then stabbed his sword into her chest for good measure. She widened her eyes as Alex twisted the blade in deeper while staring emotionlessly into her eyes.

"Had your fun, Scarlet Devil?"

"One..." Sakuya released her grip on the pocketwatch as her master let out a smile as bright as moonlight.

"Oh, **we** are just getting started."

" _THE WORLD."_

Time froze to a complete halt around Alex, the colors of his surroundings becoming inverted as he stood up and shook his head around.

"Sakuya..." He muttered before being surrounded by a sphere of knives.

"In the domain of My World, milady shall experience no further harm..." In the most talkative mood she's been in since he first encountered her, Sakuya wandered into view in front of Alex and stabbed one knife forward, causing the rest she summoned to collapse upon him.

Alex forced the knives back with a burst of lightning expulsed from his body while roaring, "Your gimmick's useless against me! I've stopped time more than I can count!"

"You are but a learner. Allow me to show you how elegantly a master controls time..." Sakuya swung her right arm out and the knives Alex dispersed vanished into a misty distortion of time.

She then spun around and warped across the room to get in front of Alex, slicing cleanly towards his neck. Alex backed off and spun his leg up to kick her in the gut, which she responded to by gracefully flipping back and landing upon her feet.

A few knives appeared from nowhere before the boy's face and he ducked as the flew by overhead. He charged along the ground, dragging up flames until he was right under her feet, where he uppercutted towards her jaw.

Sakuya swung her pocket watch out and disappeared. Alex grabbed for the Gaia Temporis and activated it a mere millisecond later. Time stopped further, and the inverted atmosphere started to distort around them.

Waves of knives came flying at him from the front and then the back, forcing him to leap and spin between them. Sakuya reappeared before his body and sliced twice at his body. A shield came to protect him, but there was something...off about how it was summoned.

"A human's brain fires impulses in one thousandth of one seconds, also known as a millisecond." Sakuya stoically remarked before pulling back and swinging her pocketwatch before her face, vanishing before Alex's retaliating fireball hit her.

He kept his hand deep in his pocket and stopped time again. This time the atmosphere was incredibly blurry, making it hard to see anything but the fireball Alex had just sent out, which was frozen in place.

Sakuya leapt at him with knives between all her fingers and slashed them down all at once. The shield came to Alex's aid, but again something was bizarre about it. The tips of her knives had come dangerously close to cutting into his chest.

"In on trillionth of one second, light travels exactly 0.3 millimeters. You call this a picosecond." Sakuya stepped back a couple inches and cross her knives down by her waist a rain of many, many more bombarded Alex from above. He stood his ground and threw the knives off with electricity, and in the blink of an eye Sakuya was once again gone.

He activated the Gaia Temporis once more and watched as color faded from the world entirely, leaving nothing but the ultraviolet rays of pure concentrated light in his surroundings. Sakuya zipped up to him and cut along his right hip. This time the knife's tip drew a single drop of blood before the shield blocked her off entirely.

A second Sakuya attacked from the opposite side in a similar manner, but raised her knife just a single inch higher. Then it vanished, almost like it was but a phantom of time. Sakuya turned around and remained stoic to the grimacing shock on Alex's face as she swung her pocket watch out and declared, "One quadrillionth of one second is where ultraviolet light exists. Humans call this a femtosecond."

She vanished and Alex gave chase further into the frozen time. Now the world was pure white, devoid of light and color. A knife wound up impaled into his back, then was spat out by his shield reforming a couple seconds later. Alex turned around and watched as Sakuya called forth dozens of knives to her aid, flinging them into his shielded body one-by-one while teleporting behind him and raising one knife to the back of his neck.

He couldn't believe it. His body was sweating and cold just from the touch of her blade, even if it didn't reach the skin. Sakuya narrowed her reddened eyes and whispered, "One septillionth of a second. Where motion ceases to be, even for a God. Yet humans arrogantly doctrine this as a yoctosecond."

Alex spun around to punch her but she had already become a whisper in the wind. One more time, Alex used the Gaia Temporis to give pursuit. In an inconceivable manifestation of space time, Alex felt a sharp pain puncture the center of his chest as a knife drove itself in deep. Then he noticed he was surrounded by hundreds of knives, all of which had to have been set up seconds in advance.

Sakuya floated a fair distance away with her back turned and her arms crossed before her chest, "Finally there is the measurement of Planck time...The single most briefest span of time to physically matter...And it is in this irrelevant speck of time that you shall fall to your knees, Phoenix of Destruction, and die."

Alex grabbed onto the knife and tried to pull it out, but it was stuck in a completely faster moment of time. No matter how hard he pulled, it wouldn't budge until a second of time had passed.

"You are unused to fighting those who would pervert your domain over time. You failed to understand that you are the only one who is affected by this frozen time. The further and further you delve, the harder and harder it becomes for your shields to protect you."

"But for milady, I cannot afford to make a mistake, not even for a yoctosecond," Sakuya closed her eyes and snapped her fingers, "Now let us dance...Until the end of this life."

The knives collapsed all at once into and through Alex's body, ripping him to bloody shreds as time resumed completely. He couldn't even scream, as a knife was shoved straight into his throat. He collapsed to his knees a human pincushion, and Sakuya turned towards her master and bowed her head with the lip of her skirt drawn out.

"Was that to your liking, milady?" She spoke softly.

"Heh, great work Sakuya! Now...mind getting me out of here?" Remilia said, practically laughing off her grievous injuries.

Sakuya nodded and took one step forward, only to be frozen stiff by an intense anger welling up behind her. Alex loomed behind her drenched in blood and a bitter scowl on his face. He grabbed her face as she turned around and smashed her into the ground.

"Sakuya!" Remilia screamed in shock.

Alex squeezed her head against the floor as his body swallowed up the knives in his wounds, breaking them down to their base elements to patch up each and every scar he gained.

"You _almost_ had me! Maybe in your next life, you'll remember to aim for the heart **and** the head!" Alex roared before he pressed down with all his might, smashing the maid's fragile skull like a grape.

Remilia widened her eyes and let out a gasp as Alex rose up, his hand covered in the grey matter of her most loyal servant. He squeezed the pulpy matter into his fist and crawled on over to Remilia, gasping in a tired, frustrated voice, "Now...where were we?"

A footstep, a single footstep, broke his concentration and caused him to jerk his head back and grumble, "What now?!"

But what surprised both him and Remilia was that the person wandering about...was none other than Flandre. She coddled her teddy bear up against her chest and stared blankly towards the two of them.

"F-Flandre...?" Alex whispered, his agitation quickly turning into a smile of joy as he turned away from Remilia and extended his hands out towards her.

"T-This is perfect! With your power, Yukari doesn't stand a chance in hell!" He was giggling ecstatically the whole time he spoke, for this was the first bright spot in what felt like an long, long time.

"...Sister?" Flandre tilted her head and stared at Remilia's disgraceful state as the vampire cried out, "Flandre get out of here! Don't get involved!"

Alex slowly walked towards Flandre and grinned, "You and I are kindred spirits Flandre. Together, there's no evil we couldn't defeat. Come on Flandre...I could really, _really_ use your help."

Remilia squirmed, trying to break free, and the longer this struggle prolong the tighter Flandre gripped her teddy bear.

"...S-Sister?" Flandre lowered her head, bit her teeth, and shivered.

Alex stopped in place as the teddy bear's head popped off. He slowly lowered one hand and tried to speak calmly to the vampire, "Easy Flandre...This isn't what it looks like, ok?"

Before he could even blink, Flandre swung her right hand up and squeezed it tightly towards his chest. Alex widened his eyes and gasped before a massive, shattering explosion went off around his body. His eighth soul shield shattered to pieces and wound up being metaphysically impaled through his body as he thrown through a bookshelf and wound up buried under a mound of books upon hitting a wall.

"W-What the hell...?" He gasped.

Flandre rose off the ground and slowly flapped her wings. Raising her hands and clutching her fingers in a haphazard manner, her grin twitched and she let out a slightly unhinged chuckle.

"I-I don't know what's happening..." She raised her head up high and decreed with a tearful face of madness, "But something's telling me...THAT I HAVE TO DESTROY YOU!"

 _Next Time: Scarlet Furor_


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13: The Fall of Sanity**

 _An hour ago..._

 _Sister is everything alright? Said Flandre, standing at the bottom of the staircase to the basement as her loving sister Remilia descended towards her._

 _But of course! Everything is just fine. Remilia responded with a bright confident grin._

 _There's a lot of commotion going on upstairs, isn't there? Flandre tilted her head aside._

 _That's because we're... Remilia's eyes turned shifty before steadying with a proclamation of,_ _撤_ _reparing to move locations! Yes yes! I have grown tired of Gensokyo, and wish to stake my claim in some new, greater land!_

 _...Remilia, what are you hiding? Flandre said with a stern narrow glare, causing Remilia to subtly bite down on her lower lip and stumble with her words._

 _N-Nothing at all! Whatever gave you that idea? I sincerely think a change of scenery will do us all wonders! That's all!_

 _...Can we bring Marisa with us?_

 _O-Of course! Remilia blurted on the spot._

 _And Kokoro?_

 _Absolutely! I'd be more than happy to-_

 _And Ms. Red-White? Will she be coming too?_

 _With each question being uttered with growing suspicion, Remilia quickly tensed up and curled her fingers in front of her chest, trying to avert her gaze from Flandre's face._

 _Just wait down here Flandre. I promise you'll get everything you wish for. Have I, Remilia Scarlet, ever uttered a lie in my life?_

 _No, but-_

 _Then it is settled! Be a good girl Flandre, and listen to your wiser, prettier, older sister! Remilia hastened her way out of the basement before a word more could be spoken. Flandre reached her hand out for a brief moment only to wrap it around her teddy bear and quietly retreat into her room._

 _For the next hour she laid on her bed staring up at the ceiling with a blank look in her eyes. Then as the whole mansion started trembling she jolted up off the bed and looked towards the stairs. Even as a vampire, her heart sank at every tremor that shook her home. And without a second's hesitation, she flew right up the stairs and rushed straight for the source of the tremors..._

 _Present minute..._

Alex pulls himself up out of the pile of books and firms his glare onto Flandre. The vampire's grin was twitching on both sides and her pupils had become slits as wide as a knive's tip. He tucked his hands into his pockets and lurched forward as his body became consumed in flames.

...Even you. Huh? Flandre? He muttered with his head sagging low to his chest. And upon biting his teeth down and snarling quietly to himself for a few seconds he swung his head up with his pupils reduced to dots and exclaimed, 鉄o...BE IT!

He rocketed off the ground and rammed his head into the vampire's gut to send the both of them colliding through multiple bookshelves, all while Remilia could only watch on, powerless to even move. Flandre summoned her twisted spear Laevateinn into both her hands and swung it down upon Alex's head, only to be greeted by one of his shields.

So...annoying! She squealed like a pig before repelling herself off Alex's head with her feet and swinging her right hand out mid-squeeze.

Forget it! Alex yelled before rushing in close and slamming her tightening fist with the back of his right hand. Flandre widened her eyes as one of the ceiling lights exploded and flashed her with a brief burst of light the exact moment Alex also wound his fist back and punched her to the ground.

Flandre crash landed on her feet and swung her spear to the left. The flames that erupted forth were a wildstorm of pink and red that shone lovily off her crystal-lined wings. Yet when that very same hue was reflected off her eyes, it only served to increase the madness she wore proudly.

Burning through mounds of books as she rose to meet Alex in battle, Flandre lashed her spear against his shielded body twice over, obscuring his vision in a flurry of wild flames. Alex wound his left fist back and clobbered her straight in the gut, dispersing the flames and putting a fist shaped imprint in the wall hundreds of feet away with the shockwave.

Flandre giggled and stretched her left hand out in front of Alex's face, managing to squeeze it down before he could speed away. The next shield exploded and hurtled him through the sky towards the opposite side of the room.

Flandre pursued him quicker than lightning and lashed at his body with wide strokes of her spear. But yet another shield rose to his aid, causing her to bite her fangs down and sneer, 典oo many too many! There's too many of these things!

Flandre forced her palm down onto Alex's gut and began to squeeze when he tightly ensnared her wrist in vines protruding from his fingertips and forced it open. So instead Flandre blasted him point-blank with a foggy crimson orb to send him flying to the ground and snapping the vines off.

She then starting squeezing her hand nice and slow while giggling non-stop. Alex hastened his own descent and sped to the right behind a bookcase, causing Flandre to destroy the bottom of a stack of books, sending the rest hurtling every whichway. Alex turned around mid-leap and swung his right hand out, suspending most of the books mid-air.

He then swung his hand out to the left and sent the books hurtling towards Flandre. She burned them all to ash with a single swing of Laevateinn. But the next second she found her body cut down across her stomach, courtesy of a compressed wind blade swung by Alex through behind his cover.

The bookcase started sliding down, but Alex toppled the top half to the ground as he charged past it towards the vampire. The energy she spent pulling herself together in the most literal of manner gave Alex the opening he needed to pound away at her body with his fists engorged with flames.

Flandre grabbed her spear in both hands and swung down at his body with all her might. But not content to leave it there she kept swinging away, cutting swathes of flames throughout the whole library. The vibrant bookscape was quickly charred black with ash, with the lingering embers being the only source of joy to be found. A pity it was coming from a person of which no joy could currently be found.

The vampire kept Alex pinned to the ground for a bit with her repeated attacks, but he much preferred it this way. Hidden behind her vicious flames that scarred the ground apart, he could swing his sword behind his back and charge it up in peace.

The flames grew so strong that their wavy form solidified into pure red light and shook the library from bottom to top. Alex grit his teeth wide with a grin and swung his sword out while Remilia boldly declared, 擢landre look out!

The flames burned so hot that even a vampire like her had the potential to turn entirely to ash. Flandre stopped swinging as the flames quickly overpowered her attacks and swung her hand out to squeeze it shut. The flames met with oblivion in silence, and Flandre immediately dove down after him.

Alex swung his hand to the right and bound Remilia's mouth with steel extending from the sawblades, only to be tackled to the ground the next second by her sister. Flandre rose and slammed her body down into Alex multiple times in quick succession, irritated by yet _another_ shield getting in her path.

Quit hiding! _I wanna see_ _ **you**_ _go BOOM!_ Flandre squeezed her hand down at Alex once more but her haste to breakthrough left her vulnerable. Alex grabbed Flandre's wrist and threw her to the ground, then continued to turn and push himself off the ground to wind up above her.

He threw many punches into her body, keeping his arms extended to their full length with every blow he nailed. Her body tore through the floorboards and her head slammed through multiple bookshelves. It was any wonder how this place could still be called a library after this relentless hurricane of insanity swept through it.

Flandre raised her right hand and squeezed it out at one of the bookcases she passed by. Using its explosion to force Alex off her, the vampire flew in a curve off the ground to pursue him. She rammed him into the side of another bookcase and squeezed her hand near his face.

He swung his head aside at the last second and the bookcase exploded in his shield's place. He then grabbed Flandre by the neck and tried to slam pin her down, only for her to take a page out of her sister's book and disperse into a swarm of bats, each of them having her jeweled wings.

She reformed higher above him with her spear drawn behind her head wreathed in a whirlwind of flames. She twirled it around and around and around some more, sweeping up everything within a fifty foot radius of herself in a terrifyingly twisted tornado of fire.

Flandre then swung her spear out and sent the tornado on a rampage across the library, tearing through the roof and ground while Alex was carried all the way towards the top in seconds. The boy swung his wings and arms out and pounded the sides of the tornado with pulses of raw power to disperse it.

He found himself right outside the mansion's rooftop, the pale light of the moon shining down upon the dying lands to give it one last splendor of beauty. He saw the barrier was halfway finished, and by his estimate Gensokyo had less than an hour left.

But that mattered little to the vampire, who rose high above him and drenched the visage of the moon in the flames of Laevateinn as she swung it down. Alex leapt to the left and paid little heed to the flames cleaving down the entire width of the mansion in a single stroke as he charged forth in a swift burst of speed.

Flandre glided aside his reckless charge and swung her right hand up, shattering the boy's shield with a successful squeeze. Alex quickly firmed himself in mid-air and swept his wings forward, bombarding the vampire with a flurry of red-hot feathers.

With her skin blistering red Flandre dove straight past Alex and lashed her spear against his hip. She turned back around and struck again, repeating this a few more times until Alex was slammed into the bottom of the mansion's clock tower.

Alex pressed his hands against the bottom of the clock tower and tore the minute hand off. When the vampire went for a frontal assault he impaled her through the chest with the minute hand and drove her back into the library. She quickly ripped the metal free from her body and swung it and her spear out at the same time, laughing with glee.

Then she zipped back and forth through the air trying to get back to Alex, who ripped the roman numerals from the clock and volleyed them in her path. Slicing through them was easy with two weapons in hands, though the minute hand quickly fell to scrutiny from the speed of which she swung it.

She tossed it aside and grabbed Laevateinn in both hands, swiping it straight into Alex's gut and cutting a massive scar along the side of the clock that the two penetrated through the moment after. Flandre forced Alex against a massive gear and kept pressing on, trying to force him between it and the one below it.

Alex overpowered her assault and grabbed onto her face to sear her face with a point-blank explosion. The charred skin and muscle, combined with the bits of bone exposed underneath, frightened Alex for a moment when Flandre just kept attacking without pause.

She viciously swung her spear at him twice, cutting through most of the gear behind him but failing to breech his shield. Her scowl tightened with increasing frustration to the point she chipped one of her teeth and she desperately tried to break his shield with her power.

Alex grabbed onto her hand and pulled her whole body past him. He pinned the front of his body to her back and continued to squeeze her arm and drag it between the gears. The sound of crunching bones and squishing blood veins from her mutilated hand made neither of them flinch, and in fact did the polar opposite. Flandre's eyes widened to their limit and her heart fluttered like a butterfly's wings upon being caught up in a storm.

This bewildering sense of excitement gave her the strength to throw Alex overhead with her other arm into the gear. Then as her hand regenerated she resummoned Laevateinn and stabbed it into his chest. The destructive force of the spear penetrated past Alex's body and disheveled the gear with hot white cracks, splintering it into large chunks that quickly collapsed upon the other below it.

The smashing of metal against metal in this confined a space forced Alex's hands to his ears as his body squirmed in response. And Flandre, not even a second later, didn't hesitate to squeeze her hand to shatter his shield and send him hurtling into the tower's crumbling innards.

Alex spread his hands out and blasted the gear pieces aside with a bubble of air, sending them through the tower's walls. He then flew straight at Flandre his own heart starting to race. He threw a flurry of punches blocked by her spear before slamming a right hook past it into her hip. She barely budged an inch and raised Laevateinn up high, wrapping it up in an uncontrolled blaze.

She slammed it down into Alex's head and devastated the remainder of the tower in a single blast. Not even an atom's worth of metal laid intact.

Alex punched Flandre out through the smoke and flew straight towards her, twisting his whole body to the left as he smashed her back down into the library. Her impact threw up a mound of dust as high as where the roof once lied, but yet it was so easily swept aside by the vigorous swing of her Laevateinn.

Flandre hunched over on the ground and caught Alex in her sights, then charged at him like a predator hungry for the hunt. Alex punched straight ahead to meet her charge, splashing the flames of their vigor across the sky. Flandre immediately dispersed into bats and flew behind Alex, leaving her spear behind at his knuckles.

Alex jerked his head back and watched the vampire reform with her right hand stretched out and her eyes sparkling wide with glee.

I. **See**. _You~_ Her hand started to squeeze down and Alex felt an immense yet hollow pressure wrapping itself around his body.

His heart raced faster and faster as fear guided his body all on its own. He tugged his body around and smashed down on Flandre's hand with both his fists, ripping the entire arm out of its socket. He grabbed onto Laevateinn and was immediately burning up from the inside trying to wield it properly.

He impaled it into the vampire's chest and let go not a second after, gasping for air. As he panted and had a cold sweat trickling down his face he roared at the top of his lungs and pounded away at Flandre's body, steadily rising above her until the light of the red moon cast his gruesome shadow atop her miniature frame.

Then he threw both hands back and smashed his palms down atop the spear, ramming the remainder of it through her body and allowing the back end to drag her to the ground like it was as heavy as an anchor. She smashed into a bookshelf and was buried under a mound of books that weighed roughly a ton.

But Alex wasn't done there. He pressed the palms he just used together and swung them back full of flames. He let the flames grow until they were bigger than his whole body, then swung them out, their sound so loud it drowned out Remilia's panicked cries towards her sister.

The assault lasted five seconds, as Alex didn't just burn through Flandre, but the mansion and the surface of Gensokyo as well. There was this big, pitch black tunnel staring him down as he drew his hands back by his hips and took a moment to catch his breath. The skin of his palms were bright red and releasing enough smoke to suffocate a giraffe. He was getting a little weary but could still see things clearly. He had just hoped that that was enough to finish the job, cause he didn't have a single shield left to protect himself from Flandre's power...

Remilia's eyes shook. She clenched her teeth and squeezed fists that were no longer there. Never had she felt this way. So powerless and empty. Her perfect maid? Her headless corpse resting but a few feet away. Her loyal gatekeeper? Laying somewhere with her guts turned to paste. Her best friend? If she wasn't dead before, she no doubt was now. And her little sister...?

 _Heeheeheehahaha!_

...Huh?

 _HeeHEEheehaHAha!_

 _HeeHeeHEEhahaha!_

 _Heehehehehehahaha!_

 _HEEHEEHEEHAHAHA!_

The cackles of madness grew in volume and number at a rapid pace. Then when there were four laughs conjoined in perfect disharmony, Alex looked towards the tunnel and saw the glistening glow of four separate pairs of wings. Then the same number of Laevateinns ignited, harkening the little vampire's return with a stout, pearl white grin and little else revealed of her face.

Alex's body trembled as he clutched his hands into fists. Then he lashed one arm out and exclaimed, 鉄tubborn vampires! Why won't you just die already?!

Hahahaha! This is fun this is fun this is so much FUN! But so sorry, you must go 'Boom' now! The four Flandres screeched in unison before scattering out of the tunnel armed and ready to fight. Alex exploded with fire and charged at the four as they collapsed upon his location, his heart pounding like a taiko drum against his chest.

 **EMBODIMENT OF THE SCARLET DEVIL:** _ **FLANDRE SCARLET**_

It was an insultingly easy matter for the four Flandre to bat Alex away by combining their Laevateinns into a single attack. Alex was swatted to the ground letting out a grunt of surprise as his head lurched back and his spine felt a little brittle.

He pulled himself together and was greeted by bright light from above. One after the other the Flandres swung their weapons to raze the sky with towering flames. He rolled away with them barely grazing his skin and looked up to see the last Flandre pointed her right hand out and beginning to squeeze it.

Alex picked up and threw a book in the way, watching it pop like a rubber balloon while his chest heaved for air. The other three Flandres dove at him giggling like a crowd of school children and swung their weapons out. Alex crossed his arms and coated them in heavy metal to block one of the attack and then rammed the middle Flandre in the neck with his arms.

Then by swinging his arms out with all his might, he scattered all three Flandres to the farthest sides of the room. Crimson beams of light rained down from the sky and exploded upon the ground, whipping the atmosphere into a frenzy of destruction was what little tomes remained were being disintegrated on the spot.

Alex flew towards the lone Flandre in the sky and rammed his fist through her chest. She widened her eyes and with an utterly mad look in them she thrust her hand into his face and began to squeeze down. Alex pulled his fist out and used it to divert her hand to the right, then splashed the blood he drew from her chest upon her eyes.

Alex then pressed his glowing palm against her face until the flames he built up screamed to be released. Before he got the chance two of the Flandres ripped him off her with their combined strength and drove him back first into the ground, his explosion going off harmlessly in the air.

The Flandres stamped their feet onto his legs and started tugging at his arms like they were attempting to uproot a large carrot. Each vigorous grunted proved wasted as Alex tugged their bodies to the ground and quickly pulled back and upright with his hands electrified.

He scorched across their backsides with millions of volts but didn't get to completely split them down the middle before another Flandre charged at him from the front. He crossed his arms to guard against her first, most vicious blow and kept it up as she swung her claws at him like a wild animal.

His arms were quickly filled with scars before he engaged in retaliation. He set his body ablaze with a towering inferno and grabbed onto Flandre to drag her into it, her hands being the first part to burn away to ash.

But as that familiar pressure began to force itself around him, Alex let the Flandre go and snatched down on the Gaia Temporis not a second too late. He stopped time and looked up to find the Flandre responsible and quickly flew behind her, resuming time as he swung his foot up into her back.

As she went hurtling to the ground two of her copies were there to catch her. She landed feet first on their palms and bounced and turned back around like on a trampoline before throwing herself at Alex once more. Alex ducked underneath the decapitating swing of her spear and threw a punch into her gut. No response. Her insanity had taken over all other senses.

Alex burrowed his fist in deeper and twisted it to the right, applying greater pressure to his blow to send her flying straight across to the other side of the room. Two of the other Flandres charged his way and grabbed onto his extended arm to give it a good tug down. Alex could feel his shoulder bone disconnecting a bit from the socket and set his arm ablaze to force the two off.

He then stretched his arm out and threw the flames out in a large fireball. Flandre squeezed her hand to crush the fireball then flew herself at Alex. He readied another fireball and was stopped by another Flandre impaling the bottom of his arm on the top of her Laevateinn.

Alex ripped the spear free but in that time allowed Flandre to ram into him with all her might, and he went flying right into the back wall. His impact tore up the wall leading up to the empty ceiling and he quickly peeled off it feeling limp in his impaled arm.

He struggled to raise it up and then found himself gasping in shock as one Laevateinn wound up plunged into his gut, followed by three more skewering him around it. Blood splashed out of his mouth in a breathless gasp and dripped onto his chest, leading to foggy vision.

He reached into his pocket and used the Gaia Temporis to stop time and give himself a chance to remove the spears before Flandre squeezed her hand. Each one burned with the fury of Hell and left his hand feeling numb by the time he was done. Nevertheless he swung that hand up and upon resuming time scorched the skies between him and Flandre with lightning.

Her wings were singed off at the folds and her arms became scorched black all across as she swung her body away from his assault and joined up with her other clones. The four of them flew around in circles and dazzled the boy with an bombardment of jeweled projectiles from their wings.

Between the gems they bounced off scarlet lasers fired from their hands, filling the sky with an impenetrable labryinth of light. Alex forced his way through their attacks at little harm to his own body and surrounded himself in a tight bubble of air once he got past them.

He rammed into the Flandre that stuck out closest amidst their tumbling escapades and popped his bubble to send the rest flying. He then grabbed onto the Flandre's neck and raised them up high, his fingertips smoking as he burned into her skin and nerves.

The Flandre gasped for air but eventually wore an unsettling smile as her eyes started bulging out of her sockets. Alex stared at her for a good moment before the Flandre suddenly popped apart, courtesy of another, and the powerful explosion tossed him across the room.

Alex swung his feet back and propped up against a piece of steel he created himself. Then he stared through the air and watched as Flandre popped out another clone to take the others' place. Squinting his eyes and buckling his teeth into a scowl, he rocketed his ragged body across the air and smashed the centermost Flandre into the wall with a punch.

Flandre's guts broke and blood spilled from her mouth, but she wore her bloody grin with pride and spit a loud cackle into Alex's face. She then scraped her claws against his chest and forced him away, immediately swinging her hand up mid-squeeze.

Alex tried to run away but the three other Flandres condensed onto his location and held him down. Alex swung his legs up and put the Flandre wrapped around them in the way of the real Flandre's power, causing it to explode and tear up part of his legs.

Biting his teeth through the burning pain, Alex pressed onward and rammed his legs into Flandre's chest, shattering her rib cage. More blood oozed from her mouth but she licked it up and lashed her head out continuing to laugh in his face out of sheer spite.

The other Flandres dug their claws into his arms and pinned him down atop one of the bookshelves. The original Flandre lined up her hand for another attempt, but Alex simply opened his mouth wide and spewed flames into her face to blind her.

It really was a show of how desperate he was getting that he resorted to such vulgar means to fend her off. As a vampire she could last forever as long as a part of her remains intact. The only way either side could feasibly win is to eliminate their enemy in one blow.

But with the amount of clones this prolonged fight could only end in Flandre's favor if this kept up. Alex refused this endgame. He refused it with every molecule of his being. He snapped his fingers and summoned lightning down from the skies to scorch the Flandres binding him down and pulled back, swinging his head around for anything that would allow him to turn the tables.

He couldn't remove the sword from Remilia's chest. It was the only thing keeping the vampire's strength at a containable amount. But...perhaps he could still use it anyway? With a devilish smirk Alex turned and dove straight for the helpless vampire.

Flandre swung her hand out and squeezed it shut as he reached for his sword. Alex pulled his hand back and let her power destroy a lone book instead. Having gotten Flandre's attention, he grinned across his face as the vampire and her clone cronies dove at him all at once.

He stayed right where he lied and pointed his hands at the ground, creating a hurricane in seconds that swept up all the remaining books and papers lying around. The library became consumed in a sea of white pages torn from their bindings, with Alex carefully guiding the papers around to slice the Flandres up with paper cuts.

Meager at first, the sharp pain quickly became difficult to handle and the real Flandre wildly squeezed her hands around to blow up the papers, but there was just so many and she could only handle one at a time. Alex meanwhile could easily navigate the storm and wail on her from afar, slipping back under cover whenever it suited his needs.

He ran through the paper swarm picking off the other Flandres one after another with his punches. They weren't blessed with the ability to regenerate from nothing like the real deal, so all it took was a few precise blows to the cranium and they were down before he knew it.

Flandre grew tired and frustrated with these games and let out a high-pitched scream before using one swing of Laevateinn to burn the papers to ash. Then she found her copies down on the ground and widened her eyes, biting her fangs down on her lip before Alex's shadow was cast down on her from above.

Flandre twisted to the left and stabbed her spear up towards his stomach, then upon missing flailed it around trying to swat him out of the sky. With quick bursts of speed Alex kept evading her attacks and drawing in closer, eventually smashing his right fist down onto her skull to make her stumble back a couple steps.

Flandre dug her feet into the ground and whipped Laevateinn straight across his abdomen, spilling blood for a brief moment before that very same heat cauterized the wound. Alex ran forward and pressed his fingers towards before coating them in sharp metal that he impaled into Flandre's chest.

The vampire, with her once innocent face ravaged with brutal madness, dropped her spear and lashed her claws all across Alex's body, scarring both skin and sky with a hail mary of crimson gashes. Alex cared not for the blood spilled in his name as he ripped the blade free and forced Flandre around with a single twist of his hand.

Before her wound fully healed he held his hand out and ripped the blade free from Remilia's, shoving its handle through the wound in Flandre's chest and back until it was firmly grasped in his hand once more. He then superheated the blade to stiffen her wound and lodge the blade in there permanently, and finally plunged the tip of the blade back into Remilia's chest.

Flandre squirmed and wiggled around, her screams soon becomin garbled by tears ripping free from her eyes. Remilia's own eyes trembled and soon closed partway with tears dripping down her face.

Alex slowly pulled away from the two, feeling a twinge of pain in his heart as he slowly rose off the ground and raised his right hand up above his face. His wings swept up the ash surrounding his body as all the heat in the room was quickly swallowed up by a vacuum converging above his right palm.

One of Remilia's tears trickled onto Flandre's face, and made her give pause. That cold, tender drop was also filled with heart, and by the most miraculous of miracles the little vampire snapped out of her bout of insanity and lifted her head to stare into her sister's eyes.

Remilia? She muttered in utter confusion, blissfully unaware of her surroundings.

Flandre used the last vestiges of her strength to grab onto and rip the steel free from her sister's mouth, and with a dry, raspy cough the vampire held her head up high and muttered tearfully, 徹h Flandre...Oh Flandre...

Remilia swung her head down and raised her voice, begging desperately for forgiveness, 的-I'm sorry! Forgive your elder sister her grievous mistakes! This...this is all my fault!

Alex listened in closely to their cries as he started to create a massive fireball to dwarf the library whole. It poked out of the ceiling and could be seen like a setting sun in the distance of the mansion.

Remilia swung her head around and had troubles breathing as she continued to cry out, 的 was a fool! A complete and utter fool! A-And you...you never should've had to come to my rescue! I did this to protect you when I should've known better than to treat you like an obstacle! Y-You are my lovely sister...And this should've been our battle to fight together...! So hate me...! Hate me until the sun goes cold in Hell...! I deserve every bit of it!

Flandre raised a hand to her sister's face and let her tears trickle down her fingers. With a somber gaze in her eyes Flandre shook her head and said, 的 could never hate you Remilia. Cause...a good little sister doesn't do that. And you taught me how to be one, in your own crazy way...

Remilia squeezed her eyes shut and muttered, 的 knew that...And yet even still I'd be so blind...I never deserved to be called the Mistress of the Night. Never at all...

You'll always be the Mistress of the Night in my eyes, Remilia. Flandre did her best to softly wrapped her hands around the back of Remilia's head, but her reach was but a couple inches too short.

Alex closed his eyes and lingered on his decision for a moment before lowering his fingers and leaving the fireball to drop down upon the mansion. The last thing he whispered to them was a mournful, 鉄weet Dreams, Scarlet Devils.

The sisters died in a blaze of crimson that towered up into the very heavens, consuming their entire mansion and reducing it to ash in seconds. Alex left the scene of destruction with his back turned to the flames and his sword returned in his right hand. He felt the hot winds howling on his back as he remained levitating over the dehydrated Misty Lake, his gaze narrowly pointed at the broken skyline of Gensokyo.

The Lunarians, the Ministry of Right and Wrong, Eientei, the Buddhists and Taoists...

The Moriya Shrine, the Tengu, the Underground...

The Four Devas, the Netherworld, Ran, and finally...

The Scarlet Devil Mansion... Alex felt a particular sorrow gnawing at him as he uttered that name. It wasn't that he wanted to cry, or mourn that they were gone. Rather, he could no longer feel his heartbeat as he thought of all these names.

He had eliminated every group and faction in Gensokyo...Except one.

His head slowly lowered towards the Hakurei Shrine perched atop the backside of Gensokyo. He had heard the whispers of the world tell him that Reimu had parted this world entirely, but a part of him felt that something was still very, very off about this whole situation.

 _You're waiting for me there...To end this where it all began. Right...Yukari?_

With his heavy heart as his only company, Alex slowly drifted through the quiet night skies towards what he'd presume was his final destination...The Hakurei Shrine.

 _Next Time: Heaven's Sword_


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14: The Fall of Heaven**

As the state of Gensokyo's barrier continues to rapidly deteriorate in silence, an innumerable amount of folk have gone and gathered in the Human Village as a last desperate attempt to find sanctity from the Phoenix of Destruction. Human and Youkai alike were putting aside their differences just to survive, but alas, the level of fear was so great in size that it drowned out most ideas.

It was so stuffed in the village that many of the people wound up getting shoved into the houses. Throughout this widespread panic, however, a couple key figures from the village were working their hardest to maintain some semblance of sanity.

One is the ninth Child of Are, Hieda no Akyuu, a short purple-haired woman who through a cycle of reincarnation has recorded and archived Gensokyo's abundant history. The other is Keine Kamishirasawa, a human teacher whose Youkai nature only shows under the light of a full moon...Like the one hanging red and ominously in the sky tonight.

Akyuu's small size led to her being swept up amongst the large Youkai as she tried to push on through to the center of the village. Luckily she had the voice of a banshee under stress and could force them aside with words alone.

Upon reaching the center she rammed into the hip of a woman in a green dress with long green-white hair and two curved horns atop her head. Akyuu spun around, shook her fist and started to yell "Watch where you're going!" when the person turned around and with a shocked, somewhat stressed look muttered her name in a dignified manner.

"Ms. Hieda?"

Taking a moment to blink and swipe the sweat off her frazzled face, only some of which was her own, Akyuu said with the grace more expected of her surname, "Keine? ...I didn't recognize you for a moment. Forgive me."

"I understand. You aren't used to seeing me like this." She replied with a modest bow.

"Not only that, but..." Akyuu shifted her eyes towards the crowd but felt no further urge to acknowledge it. Keine hung her head and looked in the same direction she did. Unlike the Child of Are, she had no qualms speaking her mind now.

"This is everyone...Isn't it?"

"It would appear so..." Akyuu said, her voice laced with melancholy. Keine laid her arms down by her waist, her hands shivering.

"And Mokou?" Upon Akyuu shaking her head Keine's hands scrunched up into fists.

"Its funny...We'd always make jokes about her outliving us all. But now..." Her voice cracked as she bite her lower lip and stammered, "It...it just doesn't feel real."

Akyuu had to look away, for if she caught even a glimpse of Keine's tears she didn't believe she'd have the strength to keep going. But as she turned away she saw a familiar face pushing through the crowd with all her might.

"Kosuzu!" Was the name of the girl Akyuu was fond friends with. She was a short orange-haired girl who was commonly seen wearing an apron and helping to run her parents' bookstore. Her power was to decipher any language, no matter how foreign it may be.

Kosuzu broke through the crowd with a shove and upon meeting her friend up close and personal went straight to asking, "Akyuu, I found you! Say, have you seen Mamizou? I've been looking everywhere but..."

"N-Not yet...But knowing her, she's probably gone and disguised herself as someone else!" Akyuu said with an unsteady grin.

"Ok! I'll keep looking! Kosuzu ran past the two and went deeper into the crowd as Akyuu let out a long sigh.

"How could I bring myself to tell her..." She muttered before looking skyward, where the cracks in the barrier were close to converging on the center of the ceiling.

Keine stood at her back and looked up, her eyes still a bit watery, "When that goes, what'll happen to us?"

"I wish I knew. Hieda no Anana, even Hieda no Amu...Neither of them witnessed the creation of the barrier up close and personal. But...I do have a couple theories," Akyuu continued to speak as she turned around and walked in front of Keine, a hand propped up against her chin, "One is that Gensokyo will simply be brought back to the Outside World..."

"It'd give the humans a chance to survive, but the Youkai..." Keine paused briefly then shook her head, "And the second theory?"

"...Gensokyo will vanish altogether, kill us all." Akyuu kept her voice at the lowest pitch possible to avert widespread panic. Keine went dead silent as her skin turned as white as her hair.

"And with the Yamaxanadu gone..." Akyuu's heart shivered and she wildly swung her hands out as she muttered, "No. No forget it...I don't want to even consider it!"

"Excuse me...?" A soft, stoic child-like voice was followed by Akyuu feeling her kimono being tugged at from behind. She turned around and much to her surprise, the tsukumogami Hata no Kokoro was hanging in her shadow.

"Have you seen my mama and papa?" She said with an innocent inquisitiveness.

"Ummm...No?" Akyuu responded with a bewilderingly blank stare in her eyes.

"Thank you...I'll keep looking." Kokoro wandered off and her mask shifted forms. Akyuu laid a hand against the side of her face and whispered, "Tsukumogami's can have...parents?"

"I hope she finds them, whoever they are." Keine remarked.

"Yes, me too. Right now, hope is all that we've got..."

After a brief nod Keine did try to put a light spin on things, "It may not be much, but I did devour the history of the village to try and ward the Phoenix of Destruction off."

"We have to do everything we can to make it through...I just wish Reimu were still here to help." Akyuu felt downtrodden at the slightest mention of the shrine maiden's name.

"Her _or_ Marisa." Keine remarked softly.

"I definitely haven't seen Marisa at all. She must still be up at the shrine..." Akyuu muttered, offering the tiniest bit of pity.

Keine hung her head for a moment but then swung it up and cheerfully declared, "Those two could solve any Incident, even this one!"

Akyuu nodded in agreement and continued, "Reimu may have been a rude, abrasive sloth, and Marisa a lying, hyperenergetic thief..."

"...But we owe them a lot. Perhaps more then they'll ever know..."

As those two reflected upon their unlikely heroes, Kokoro continued to wander around, calling out for "Mama!" and "Papa!" every few seconds.

"Hey! Over here!" But instead she was called to be another voice, one rough and tough and familiar voice. Through a gap in the crowd Kokoro saw that Tenshi waving at her with her head held high and a big goofy grin on her face, in stark contrast to the dour mood everyone else had.

"Tenshi!" Yelled Kokoro as she ran out and threw her arms around the Celestial's waist, nearly tripping onto her knees in the process.

"Whoa there! Ease up a little won't ya Kokoro?" Tenshi gently pulled the menreiki up on her feet and pushed her out to arms' length before patting her on the shoulders and saying, "Glad to see you're still alive and kickin' though!"

"I thought something happened to you Tenshi..." Kokoro said with the most microscopic of frowns, "But what are you doing here?"

"Oh trust me! As much as I'd loooove to hang around all this sweat and musk..." Tenshi's smile cracked as she muttered, "Weeeeell...Lets just say those old farts in Bhava-agra slammed the doors shut and threw away the key."

Kokoro tilted her head and without any other change in expression Tenshi could read that she wasn't getting it, not helped by her saying bluntly, "You got kicked out for doing something bad again, didn't you?"

"N-No!" Tenshi stammered while her eyes shifted about, "I-Its just that none of them are willing to let the apocalypse come a-knockin'. Soooo, long story short, I'm trapped down here with the rest of ya!"

"That's horrible!" Kokoro said with an exasperated gasp.

"Awww its not THAT bad. Least I still got you and my other buddy..." As Tenshi rubbed Kokoro's head she looked around and muttered, "Well... _had_ one anyways. She must've ran off to find her sister or something. Much like how you're looking for your ma and pa!"

Kokoro opened her mouth wide but Tenshi pressed her hand up to her face and said with a grin, "Before you ask, no, I haven't seen 'em. I've been too busy yelling at those selfish old geezers to keep up-to-date on the what's happening."

Kokoro's only response towards that was to cough into her fist quietly.

Suddenly, everyone went silent. It was an unnatural occurrence, like they'd all been hypnotized. They slowly turned their gaze towards the sky except for Tenshi, who thought it'd be more appropriate to crack a joke, "Is this really the time for bird watching?"

It was only once Kokoro tugged at her dress and pointed up that she did so too. Deep in her gut, she knew why this silence had fallen. But she never could have guessed for even a moment that the vilified Phoenix of Destruction would wind up being that one boy she saw in the festival not too long ago...

Alex slowly hovered towards the village, his body as stiff as a scarecrow's. Though his gaze was locked onto the Hakurei Shrine, he found his attention wandering elsewhere upon feeling an icy chill coming from below.

He gazed down upon the Human Village and could feel their discontent. It was as thick as an iceburg. All the survivors were huddled in a cramp space, waiting for their end to come...An end that never would have been had he not dared shown his face back in Gensokyo.

From where he stood their eyes were like dots, and their bodies as small as puppies or cats. They weren't gathered to cheer him on, nor were they looking to fight back. They were cuddled up against each other in fear, and their hearts begged out for him to just go away and leave them alone.

In all the years he's been the Elemental Overlord, he's never known what its like to have the humble folk cheer him on. He's always stood alone, whether in victory or in defeat. He coveted those cheers of triumph, but knew that they would never come...

Yet deep in his heart, he knew he couldn't leave these people to drown in their despair and sorrow. He knew even deeper down that he was not the most fitting person to alleviate their spirits, but he'd try his best anyways.

" _That's the least I can do after the crappy hand I dealt them..."_

Alex lowered himself a little closer and watched as hundreds nearly collapsed over themselves in retreat. This discord struck hard in his chest like an arrow laced with poison, but he simply bit his teeth down and kept going until he was only a hundred feet over the village. Then he held his hands out and watched as they fell into silence and a state of antsy anticipation.

Sweat trickled down his brows as he quietly swallowed and took in a deep breath, bellowing out loud enough for all to hear, "Citizens of Gensokyo!"

He tried to keep his voice sounding optimistic, but the people squirmed. They could easily sense how forced his tone was, especially Tenshi, who slanted her brows and muttered in disbelief, "The hell is this...?"

"I know you're all frightened, and worried..." Alex closed his eyes, hoping it'd make it easier to speak without their fearful eyes staring up at him, but the imagery of their despair had become fully ingrained into his conscience, making him stumble on his next words.

"B-But there's no reason to be alarmed! Even if Gensokyo is on the brink of annihilation...I swear to you all that I will avenge it!" His voice thundered throughout the village, and was as shaky as the world after a large thunderclap.

"...Is he actually serious with this drivel?!" Tenshi muttered, with Kokoro forcing her hands onto her mouth and shaking her head to try and get her to stop.

Alex winced for a moment and looked down, but upon hearing continuous silence he continued unopposed, "Yukari Yakumo is still the enemy! _Our..._ enemy! Take a look around you! What has she done for you all in your hour of need?!"

He swung his head around with a bitter scowl on his face, "How many of you are only living in this village because she brought you in from the Outside World?! How many of you have lost loved ones because she allowed you to be treated like cattle?! And now that HER world is coming to an end, she doesn't even have the decency to show up and give you the time of day!"

Tenshi's eyes slanted further and she started pushing against Kokoro's arm, mumbling at her to "Let me go!" while the menreiki whispered at her, "Tenshi, don't!"

"But I swear to all that nothing has changed! I WILL find Yukari, I WILL put her down for good! And once she is gone, I will do everything in my power to transport you all safely to the Outside World!"

His voice felt dry and hoarse from running his mouth that long, but he felt his point had been made perfectly clear. After closing his eyes and letting out another sigh he began to turn and move away from the village when he suddenly had screamed into his ears, "NICE SPEECH ASSHOLE! BUT NOBODY BUT YOU BELIEVES A WORD YOU SAID!"

Alex's fists scrunched up and a dull quiver went up in his spine as he twisted his head back and glared down at the center of the village, where Tenshi stood atop the nearest roof and shouted at him with a smile.

"... _You_." He muttered as though addressing a fly.

Tenshi bounced off the rooftop right as Kokoro climbed up to try and pull her back to the ground. Landing atop one of her rugged keystones, the Celestial pulled her an empty sword handle from her hip and waved it out to the right, flaring up the yellow and red flames that comprise its blade.

Floating ten feet away from Alex with her sword planted between her feet, Tenshi raised the rim of her hat and grinned, "Yeah that's right! Its me! The one and only Tenshi Hinanawi, at your service!"

Alex swerved his body to the right and narrowly glared her down, telling her in no lesser terms, "Ground yourself now, Celestial, before you do something you'll not get the chance to regret."

"And if I don't?" Tenshi grin grew especially smug, "What'll ya do, kill me?!"

"If you'd like to add more reasons to your ever-growing list, then please! _Be my guest_." Flames started spurting from Alex's fists as he squeezed them.

"Ha! See?!" Tenshi swung her sword up behind her shoulders and waved her free hand loftily in the air, "All that talk about putting our safety first is a load-a crap!"

Alex's heart sank a bit but the fires of anger swelling within kept it aloft as he growled, "If you've got any complaints Celestial, why don't you direct them towards the real villain?"

"I'm telling you to cut the crap!" Tenshi yelled while leaning forward and pressing her fists up to her hips, "Or what, is no one allowed to speak against you, o'mighty Phoenix of Destruction?"

Alex immediately swung his hand up and drew his sword while mumbling, "Where do all of you people get the right to be this smug, I wonder?"

Tenshi stood up and nudged her hat up with just her thumb while responding playfully with, "Heh! Cause I'm not just a Celestial, Gensokyo's acting Guardian Angel!"

Kokoro immediately slapped her face with both her palms and shook her head in embarrassment, while Alex barely constrained a laughing cough and sputted out in glee, "Guardian Angel? YOU?! Gensokyo's really gone down the crapper, hasn't it?"

Tenshi bit her teeth down and swung her sword out to the right, doubling the length of the blade while declaring, "Don't underestimate me! The Phoenix of Destruction will hardly be a challenge for one such as myself!"

After he finished laughing Alex drew his head up and glared at Tenshi with dark red irises and bit his teeth into a scowl as he told her off, "What exactly do you think you will accomplish here, Tenshi Hinanawi? Are you planning to die for a dream, like Suika did? Are you seeking vengeance, like Eirin did? Is this a matter of pride, like what Ran and Remilia died for? Or do you plan to go out a martyr, like Kanako, Miko AND Byakuren did?!"

Kokoro froze up and peeled her hands down off her face, her body trembling as she muttered the words "Mama" and "Papa" in what could only be describe as fear.

Tenshi raised her brows and whispered with a hint of shock, "...You killed them all, didn't you?"

"They all died for causes they thought were worth believing in. So think carefully before you go spitting on their graves, Celestial."

Tenshi swerved her head just the tiniest bit to the left and saw Kokoro shaking with a vacant stare in her eyes. With her lips pursed and a hefty sigh, Tenshi shrugged her shoulders and swung her sword out, her eyes alit by its scarlet energy as she suddenly took up a more serious tone, "Oh, I'm doubly certain of what I'm doing now."

She cracked a smirk that'd scare a dragon off as she whispered a most daring dare, "So bring it on asshole. Hit me with your best shot."

Alex clicked down all seven triggers and groaned as he transformed, "With. _Pleasure._ "

As his golden flames flushed through the skies above the Human Village Alex threw himself as Tenshi the moment she swung her blade. Their first strikes collided and bowled most of the villagers over with their shockwave, while the two locked foreheads and gnashed their teeth bitterly at one another, their faces alit with the flames of war.

 **THE DAUGHTER OF THE HEAVENS:** _ **TENSHI HINANAWI**_

Alex grinded his blade against the malleable length of Tenshi's Hisou no Tsurugi, sending sparks to brighten the skies. He kept at it until the tip of his blade was about to slip off, upon which he blasted the Celestial back with an explosion and immediately charged forth before she had the chance to recover.

Tenshi whipped her blade up through the air, lengthening it to twenty feet long to create a wave of energy of similar size and depth. Alex rammed through the energy with the help of his shield and cut Tenshi across the chest. The Celestial bled little and grinned at the pain before slicing her blade along Alex's shielded face, dragging him away from where she stood.

She then slammed her blade into her keystone and summoned five smaller ones in a straight line before her. With a gentle glow they fired rays of pure scarlet energy into Alex's body, grinding up against his shield and dragging him even further away until he diverted their flow with a single slash, simultaneously breaking the stones with compacted air.

He leapt forward and dragged his sword down, slamming its emblazoned form against her blade to send her hurtling right off her rock. She gracefully landed upon another and stabbed her sword out to send two keystones straight towards him.

Alex cut the first one down but the other circled behind him and sprayed him with a foggy cone of scarlet energy. It activated his second shield and left his body feeling a bit itchy. Without even looking back he punched the air behind him and shattered the stone, then squeezed his hand and punched out to send the rocks hurtling through the air no faster than bullets would travel.

Tenshi swung her sword up and consumed the stones in its fire, then vaulted straight off her lofty perch and stabbed her blade straight down towards Alex's chest. Outside the village's perimeter she could safely quake the surface and summon a series of large rocky pillars to slam into Alex's back and pin him down between them and her blade.

She burrowed the blade's tip deep against Alex's chest but was continuously met with the resistance of his shield. Laughing off her futility with a hearty cough, Alex swung his right hand up and blasted her point-blank with a flurry of flames.

With merely minor burns on her dress Tenshi flipped and landed upon her original keystone. Then with a vicious swing of her sword to the left she raised and sandwiched Alex between the rocks with a thunderous clap. Alex immediately brust through the rocks with his body consumed in fire and his right fist squeezed as tight as his scowl.

He swung his fist back and punched the air, knocking Tenshi clean off her stone and leaving her feeling a little winded. She was able to call up another keystone to ferry her to safety as she lied momentarily on her back, swinging her sword to fend off Alex's pursuit.

She mustered the strength to keep repelling each of his blows, for he sacrificed power for speed, but even then the gap between them was large enough to worry her somewhat. Tenshi created a curved arrangements of stones to slide back onto her feet and regain a better posture to strike back.

With her wild side shining bright in her eyes Tenshi swung her sword back and threw some rocks in Alex's way to give her the opening she needed. Wearing her proudest smirk the Celestial whipped her blade out, bathing a hundred feet of sky in a bright scarlet hue and throwing Alex back that same distance.

He dug his heels against the molecules of the air until he stopped and then swung his sword up towards Tenshi, shaking his head to chide her for even trying. The Celestial grinned and stabbed her sword into her keystone. Alex heard a cracking sound coming from directly below his chin and looked down to find that his third soul shield was starting to break. Then like a glass window met with a stone, it shattered completely, the shards dissipating into mist at his feet.

"Gotcha...!" Tenshi cheered as she summoned a dozen keystones to surround Alex and blast him with their scarlet rays. A fourth shield came to his aid, but for a moment he did flinch and prepare to block with his blade.

He squinted at the Celestial, specifically her vaunted weapon, with mild annoyance as he recalled its power. The Hisou no Tsurugi can only be wielded by Celestials, but it had the power to convert spiritual energy into the weakness of whatever it was it struck.

But it was merely a blade. Tenshi herself could not perform the same feat. Thus, Alex knew _exactly_ what he had to do.

The Celestial came rushing at him swinging her blade through her scarlet rays, cutting straight past his fourth shield and into his chest. But Alex grabbed onto her wrist midway through and pulled her in as close as physically possible, squeezing down on the wrist to try and force the blade out.

But she proved resilient, aggravatingly so. With a smile everlasting Tenshi squeezed her hand tightly around the Hisou no Tsurugi and pulled her hand free from Alex's grasp, cutting back along the same part of his chest she had before to further burn the wound.

She recalled her keystones and formed a ring before her body, sending the scarlet rays out in a flash to draw out Alex's fifth shield.

His sheer refusal to show weakness led to him lunging straight over the rays and slamming his palm into Tenshi's face to drag her towards the ground. She used her divine power to summon more pillars of stone to cushion her fall, though the impact was still rough on her back.

Nevertheless she used the opportunity to slip out of Alex's grasp and whip her sword towards the back of his head. Alex raised his sword to block it, only for Tenshi to reveal yet another of the blade's tricks by shifting its shape so the blade would curve around his defenses and still go forth with its attack.

Alex let go of his sword and ducked and slid underneath the Hisou no Tsurugi. Taking a note out of a certain someone's playbook, he dragged his fist along the ground and spewed up magma along the way towards Tenshi's feet, where he rose up and smashed her in the chin with an uppercut.

Tenshi returned her blade to its normal size and dropped and stabbed it into the ground, creating large white shockwaves that threw Alex into the air and ruptured the pillars apart. Alex swung a hand out and swept the skies with a series of fiery explosions, hoping to smoke Tenshi out from the debris.

But in a bit of stealthiness on her part she managed to sneak behind him on one of her keystones and wind up her sword for a mighty attack. She took aim towards his neck and whipped the blade out in a second, only for Alex to vanish a moment after.

He used the Gaia Temporis to get above her head and swing his whole body back, kicking both his feet onto the top of her head. She broke through her keystone and dropped to the ground with her knees feeling sore, but Alex simply warped down before her face and lunged his fist into her nose, ensuring it'd be just as sore.

Tenshi fought against her body being rammed through multiple trees to swing her sword at the ground, kicking up mounds of dirt to obscure herself. Alex brushed the dirt away with a swipe of his head and bent the trees to further impede her path.

After her head rammed into one of those trees Tenshi grit her teeth and grabbed her blade in both hands and raised it high overhead. When Alex came a-chargin' she swung it down with all her might, the scarlet energies towering high over the forest canopy.

Alex paused and retracted his punch to instead throw it out to the left, summoning a bluster gale around his body to divert the energies as they flooded the forest like a tidal wave. Alex then swung his fist back and plunged it through the innermost layer of energy.

Tenshi greeted him by plunging the handle of her Hisou no Tsurugi past his fist and into his chest. Though she took a devastating blow that cracked her ribs, she could confidently smirk as the sword unleashed its power upon him, inscribing the scarlet seal of "Fuuin" onto his entire body.

As the seal collapsed upon him, Alex's fifth shield shattered and his body felt like it was attacked from the inside by a single, powerful burst of energy. With a loud "Pop!" he dropped to his knees and slammed his right palm against the ground, panting and sweating.

Tenshi recalled the Hisou no Tsurugi and levitated off the ground, extending her palms out with the handle pressed between them. With the power of all living beings at her fingertips the scarlet miasma condensed into a bright, solidified state and shook all of Gensokyo to its core.

Alex dug up the dirt at his fingertips as he squeezed his hand into a fist and swung his head up, his eyes perfectly reflecting the scarlet light from his irises. As Tenshi fired that massive beam of scarlet energy she was most known for Alex charged into the center of the beam and let both his sixth and seventh shields be burned away just for the opportunity to make the Celestial feel pain.

He burst through the start of the beam and took Tenshi by surprise, followed by punching her square in the face with a flaming eruption of power. She was knocked to the ground but could quickly draw her sword for battle as Alex dove at her to continue his assault.

He punched at her sword and received a cut between his knuckles. He leapt off the ground and swung his arms out, summoning the might of a thousand thunderstorms to smash into her body. Tenshi was burned along the right thigh and stumbled in her support, forcing her to raise a keystone off the ground to ride off into the sky.

Alex high-tailed after her without any misstep, and as the two sped back towards the village Tenshi whipped up a series of keystones to surround him. With a quick spin and the steel of his wings Alex sliced through the stones before they could even glow and then rammed his whole body into the Celestial to knock her off her perch.

He grappled around her waist and attempted to ground her, only for her to shrink her blade to the size of a knife and jam it into his chest. She got so dangerously close to his heart that he let go and thrust twenty feet back in an instant. He swung his hands out and gathered flames into a sphere that he launched out as a beam.

Tenshi whipped her sword out to cut it in twine the moment she landed upon another keystone. Alex's eyes flared wide open and he dove down covered in flames. She swung to the left then the right as he passed and curved back around for another attack. Along the way she tried to cut him with her blade, and successfully snagged his right arm.

He spun around and dove straight back down, this time slamming the fire into Tenshi's body after ramming into her sword. He endured the cuts to his arms in order to drag his hands closer to her wrist, where he quickly grabbed onto and flung the Hisou no Tsurugi's handle far far away.

Before the Celestial had a second to recall it, Alex crossed his arms and slammed them into her neck, driving her towards the ground. She choked as she tried to summon up pillars of stone to slow him down, but he simply barreled through each one and soon rammed her into the village streets.

He dredged up waves of dirt that swept the panicked citizens aside as he dragged her into the center of the village for all to see. Upon stopping at that location he pulled his arms out and slammed his hands down beside her mouth, which was bleeding from the side. She was still smiling, even as he glared at her with the intensity of the sun.

"What's so funny huh?" He growled before digging his knees onto her stomach and swinging his fist across her face.

"What did you think this farce was going to accomplish, HUH?!" He swung his other fist into her face, eliciting a gasp of shock from the audience.

"Did you think this would inspire the survivors to remain hopeful?!" He punched her with his left fist, and then his right, "That this would rally them to make one last stand against their enemy?!"

After one more punch Alex swung his bloody arms out to the sides and exclaimed with his eyes wide and mad, "Look at them! They're still just as scared as before! And you know why?! Because you're not an inspiration...to ANYONE!"

He smashed his fist down on the front of her face, breaking her nose and causing her to gag on her blood. Yet still she smiled, so Alex grabbed her neck and raised her head up. She spit some of her revolting blood onto his face and stared him squarely in the eyes as she told him, "And...and you are? Cause it sure ain't me they're frightened of..."

Alex slammed her head back down and held it down as he pounded away at her face with one hand for a few seconds, drenching his fist in her blood. When he was done, still, STILL she smiled in his face like a hyena.

"Hehehe...I'll take great pleasure in the afterlife knowing that you've sealed your fate..." Tenshi chuckled.

"Afterlife?" Alex's grin slanted and he started to laugh as well, growing louder with every punch he rammed into Tenshi's face, "Do you think...that having a slight change of heart just...SWEEPS AWAY all the crimes you committed?!"

He dropped her head to the ground and bit his teeth down while wailing at her face with both his hands, knocking off bits of flesh and her teeth as he scowled, "You're going to HELL Tenshi Hinanawi! You! Yukari! And every other piece of shit bad guy that stains this universe!"

"You can smile and laugh all you want! But nobody will ever, EVER, listen to a LOUSY!"

" **CRACK!"**

"DELINQUENT!"

" _ **Scrunch!"**_

"CELESTIAL!"

…

Alex raised his brows and panted. His final punch had been stopped. He couldn't budge it an inch, even with all his might. He felt something dreadful crawling up the back of his neck and slowly started turning his head back. In spite of her mangled face Tenshi cracked a smile and managed to say, "I...only needed to inspire _one_...To screw you over...Phoenix of Destruction..."

Kokoro. It was little, quiet Kokoro, who held Alex's arm at bay with just the grip of her left hand and her eyes draped in shadow. She hadn't a single mask floating around her body, and the anger that radiated from her body physically manifested as red wavy flames that lifted the bangs before her forehead and revealed a blank, crying glare that gave Alex a brief heart attack.

"W-What...?"

"Let...go of her..." Kokoro whispered, clamping her hand around Alex's wrist with enough force to crack the bones underneath and make the sound echo throughout the village.

As Alex gasped in pain Kokoro raised her head up high and screamed at the top of her lungs, "I SAID LET GO OF HER!"

Her energy exploded like dynamite going off and flung Alex off Tenshi into divot he carved just a moment ago. He landed on his feet and grabbed his wrist, feeling the pain seering into his nerves while his eyes remained focused upon the menreiki.

" _This power is...!"_

Kokoro held her arms out and levitated off the ground, the energy she unleashed growing to cocoon her body while violent winds swept throughout the village. Alex was the only one whose body budged in the face of this gale, and after biting his teeth down he watched as Kokoro's energy continued to spiral out of control, with the shell growing and forming into some sort of strange effigy.

" _How...could she have this much power hiding inside of her?!"_ Alex suddenly found himself retreating into the sky and watching from afar as Kokoro's energy quickly spread out to the perimeter of the village and started to rise. Higher and higher it grew with the menreiki suspended in the chest of the forming figure.

An arm formed on each side, its astonishing girth sweeping up winds that nearly tore away the forests as they reached out and caught the air in their fists. In their grasps they wielded a glowing naginata as tall as a ten-story building. The head formed, shaped like the face of a Buddha statue, but was swiftly covered up by a mask that greatly resembled Miko's face, yet looked positively stunning and respectful. Behind this effigy of emotion sixty-six arms unfurled like a blossoming flower and held a different mask in each hand.

As the effigy turned from red to blue, Alex stared at it in both fear and awe. It was a giant, dwarfing all else that ever was and ever shall be in Gensokyo, yet it stood perfectly still atop the Human Village and protected it as its own guardian deity. The beating heart of this giant was the young menreiki herself, whose eyes remained shut within its chest cavity.

She remembered **their** voices. **Their** warmth. Their laughter, their joy. Their sadness, their tears. Their hope, their dreams. Everything she ever shared, every memory, every meal, every hug and kiss and words of wisdom, she clung those vivid memories against her heart and swung her eyes wide open. They were crystal clear, as bright and beautiful as radiant diamonds.

"Mom...Dad...Mamizou...Tenshi...Everyone..." She drew her own naginata into each hand and leaned her titanic shell to dwarf her enemy in shadows.

Her eyes trembled with tears as her screams escaped the confines of this wonderful world and echoed throughout the cosmos.

" _ **LEND ME YOUR STRENGTH!"**_

 **THE RECLAIMED GODDESS OF EMOTION:** _ **KOKORO-NO-OKAMI**_

 _Next Time: Last Masquerade_


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15: The Fall of Hope**

 _The world isn't without a voice. Quiet though it may be, its a voice that is as full of life as you and I. The world watches us, it serves us, and all it asks in return is that we don't hurt it back._

 _A world breaks, and it cries and moans in silence, quaking the ground we walk on. A world cries, and it fills the sky with its tears. But what happens when a world experiences surprise, or awe? They say that if something can surprise an entire world to the core, then everyone who stands on it, whether aware of this event or not, join together in a collective gasp in place of the world's inability to express it._

 _That is what Kokoro's defiance has inspired. It is more than I ever could have hoped for. But do not fall prey to arrogance young one. You have the strength to turn despair into hope, and protect those who fear the call of death. But even hope...is something that he can destroy._

Alex had never felt so small in all his life. His body alone was dwarved by the tip of the one of the colossus' fingers. He grabbed onto his chest and felt his heart racing as his body trembled. He stared straight at Kokoro floating in the chest of this titan and scowled. He remembered about what Mamizou had told him...How Yukari held Kokoro in great interest, and it was plain to see why.

" _How do I even begin to fight this thing...?!"_ Referring to its size moreso than its power, even though Kokoro was now no slouch when it came to that either.

His first response was expected, yawn-inducingly predictable in fact. At the first sign of a struggle, he yelled bitterly at his opposition like they were the ones who were insane, "You're doing what she wants! You're Yukari's PUPPET don't you get it?!"

"I don't care!" But with an echoing defiance Kokoro steeled her gaze with rage and bellowed to the heavens, "She was right about you! Right about everything! You need to be stopped! You HAVE to be stopped!"

Alex bit his teeth and was thoroughly disgusted by what he was hearing. Such blind obedience...She was not better than a puppy on a leash in his eyes. She wasn't thinking. She was being guided along by pure instinct.

" _And she KNEW it'd go this way...! Just like everything else..."_ Alex's hand went from his chest to his head, which felt it was being pressed between hot iron.

"I was wrong about them..." The sense of kinship he felt towards Flandre and now Kokoro was little more than childish optimism...

" _I told you didn't I? We can't trust_ _ **anyone**_ _."_

That vile voice echoed in his head until little more than a whisper remained. Then his irises turned fully red, as he dragged his fingers down the front of his face and swung his hand out from his shoulder to draw his burning blade.

"You're blind..." The fire from his blade exploded with the force of an erupting volcano.

"And a fool!" He then dashed forth, scarring the fabric of space-time with a twisted crack on the warpath towards the titan's chest.

She steeled her gaze upon him and brought her titan to life. The slightest budge of the right naginata shook the air on its way towards Alex. He kept moving forward and was punished rightfully by the weapons' turbulence as he failed to dodge it in time.

Before he could realign himself the other naginata rose to meet him. He swung to the left and was tossed around like a fly in a storm, putting him far away from the center of the chest. Upon swinging his arms to stabilize Alex charged straight for Kokoro yet again.

The tsukumogami closed her eyes and crossed her arms before her chest, her body become alit like a newborn star as energy gravitated towards the core of the titan.

With a swing of her arms she sent dozens of fogged comets flying forth from the titan's chest and peppered Alex's body during his vain attempt to evade them.

A few of his shields were shaved off on top of his body briefly experiencing intense feelings of emotion. Joy, sorrow, and laughter were but a few of them. He gasped and briefly froze up, allowing her right naginata a chance to force itself straight into his body and shove him away.

The air pressure wrapped around his body thicker than water as he felt like a bug smeard upon a car window. He dug his fingertips into the blade and fought against the tear of his body with a blood-curling roar.

It was a slow, arduous attempt but soon the weapon stopped and Alex retained a strong grasp on its tip with all his might. He tried to force it out of Kokoro's grasp, so she responded by swinging her other one up. Alex flew away and the weapons banged together, throwing sparks around like fireworks.

Alex saw his chance and sped between the staffs, his body screaming with fire. With each time his body let out a boom, the cone of flame grew larger until it overshadowed the titan's head in size. Alex smashed into its chest and watched as the flames rippled across its goliath frame and forced its head back a few yards.

But even after a couple further punches he could not break through, so he made a hasty retreat and swung his arms out with flames fully formed in the palms.

Kokoro closed her eyes and gathered her own energy within her body, and when his attack was unleashed in a widespread burst she was ready to meet him with a concentrated beam no bigger than her own body. Her beam struck the center of the devastating flames while she remained floating with the serenity of an enlightened angel.

The clash of strength seemed to be in Alex's favor for the first few seconds, but then it started to become a stalemate before swiftly having the flames point-blank in Alex's face. He grit his teeth as the flames broke apart and Kokoro's energy smashed into his gut hard enough to wind him.

The beam dragged him far, far away in a mattter of seconds. His attempt to push and divert the energy with his fingers backfired splendidly, as he was overwhelmed by feelings of sadness buried within the beam. Though it weakened him, he still managed to shove the beam aside, and felt a tear trickle down his agape face.

He shook his head, forcefully rubbed the tear on his sleeve, then bit his teeth and lashed his left arm across his chest. Dozens of gargantuan lightning bolts pierced the sky with flashing light on their way straight towards Kokoro, each of which were met by the defiance of her naginatas crossing together.

Alex rammed his body into the center of the weapons and managed to open a gap between that he wedged himself into and began pushing them aside with his hands. His arms throbbed in pain as he squeezed his hands around them tight and tried to rip the weapons free from her grasp.

He only made a few yards worth of progress before Kokoro retaliated with a sweeping laser from the titan's chest, which forced him to pull out. Another laser swept his way and he dodged down, then flew up and forward as yet another took its place.

He glanced over his shoulder at the naginatas and saw them sliding back into her grasp. Not wanting his progress to be wasted he spun around and bolted for the right weapon, evading the web of beams that fired out in his path.

He took his fist to just below the naginata's blade and successfully dislodged it a bit from the titan's grasp. Another punch would have been all it took to force it out all the way. Yet with his fist inches away from the success of this goal the other naginata was swung into his face and drove him straight down onto the back of the titan's right wrist.

Her only error was allowing him the use of his legs. With their full support at his behest Alex kept the weapon from squishing him flat and was allowed a prime opportunity to strike back. Once he felt the pressure of the naginata wouldn't be his undoing, Alex bolted forth along the titan's arm at mach speed.

The naginata scraped up the arm in pursuit but could only keep up via the merits of its size more than its speed. Alex quickly scaled up the shoulder and backflipped over his pursuer, his gaze locked onto the other weapon that was slowly sliding back into the grip of its hand.

He flashed a smirk and charged down near the wrist the wobbly naginata was in, slamming it with a furious burning punch. The wrist was forced open just enough that all it took was a single punch for Alex to send the weapon spinning through the air. It stabbed the ground hundreds of yards away and brought widespread devastation to the surrounding forest, as though it even mattered at this point.

Kokoro brought the remaining naginata down post-haste but Alex stood his ground and let the weapon smash into him. His body didn't budge from that spot but quivered like mad for a few moments. He held up against the naginata with both his hands and pressed to overwhelm its strength. When he felt it was growing docile and weak, he let go and pulled back with sword drawn.

He held it down by his left hip and swung his whole body to the right as he made his attack. The first blow made barely visible cracks appear along the staff, which grew upon the second strike hitting them. The third blow chipped large chunks of it off, and with one final slash that left a glint of red across the sky he sliced the blade off from the rest of the staff.

He quickly rose and delivered a spin kick to the broken bottom, firing it towards Kokoro's chest. She blocked the blade with the back of the titan's left hand and threw it skyward, then began firing tons of beams in multiple directions. Alex sped towards the broken blade and was scraped by the beams, feeling burning pain on top of whatever emotion Kokoro dared to inflict upon him.

Yet he trudged on undeterred and snagged the blade in both his hands. He dragged himself straight down and used the blade to tear the titan's mask in twine and wound the goliath's chest with a splitting gash that spilled out energy in a burning flash of azure light.

The titan screeched and flailed its arms back in pain, while Kokoro grabbed onto the sides of her head and trembled. Alex flew into the gash and squeezed his hands into the center, tugging at its sides to force his way deeper inside.

Kokoro floated eerily still for quite a while as it seemed as though Alex would succeed in his task. Yet as the pieces of the titan's mask crashed to the ground, she gently closed her eyes and took in a long, deep breath. Her face was now dried of tears as a mellow wave of green spread out from her body.

Alex felt his arms caving in as the gash was pressing back together and quickly retreated back outside. He looked up and watched as the titan became fully green in seconds, with the arms that were suspended behind it spreading to both sides of its back to form a pair of wings. The Buddha's face morphed into a blank canvas covered up by a question mark, only for it to then be veiled by a mask shaped like a raccoon's face, but with its eyes squinted shut. Then the head was topped off by a hat with something resembling a peach at its rim.

Kokoro opened her now dazzling emerald eyes and held her arms out, with the titan obeying without question. It gathered energy in its palms and clapped them together with Alex near the center, letting out a silent clap that sent him tumbling hundreds of feet away in seconds.

He spread his wings and looked towards the titan, which flapped its heavy wings without making a sound, nor did it disturb its surroundings. The many masks they carried lit up and sent dazzling balls of light into the sky. The floated there, seemingly without cause to attack, until Alex suddenly found one speeding past his body faster than the speed of light.

His body felt weakened, yet without the pain that came with it. He grit his teeth and sped towards the titan post-haste, aiming to breech the weakened chest. He evaded the orbs flung in his way with narrow timing and rammed his burning fists into the spot he penetrated before. Try as he might though, his knuckles grinded against an impenetrable wall.

He drew his sword and buried the tip into the chest, using both his hands for better leverage. The blade slipped out and he nearly fumbled it trying to retreat from the descending orbs. He swung his blade aside and cut more of those orbs down, surrounding himself in a flurry of slashes so fast that none could perceive his arms.

So focused he was, that he missed the glint of light radiating off the titan's wrists. Many beams shot off from them in a radial pattern and spun around atop her palm, intertwining on occasion. Alex was swept up by a couple of them before realizing they were there, upon which he quickly flew back out of their range.

This put him at the mercy of the endless orbs, but he continued to cut away at them while building up energy for a large flaming slash that burnt past the lasers and struck the titan in the chest. It stirred ever slightly in annoyance as it twisted its wrists and spread its payload of beams across the sky.

Alex reached into his pocket and used the Gaia Temporis to stop time and create an opening between the beams. He sped towards the titans' chest as time resumed and impaled his blade into it. He managed to get just a little bit deeper in and tugged up with all his might.

His body's flames burst off as he ripped a scar into the creature's frame all the way up to the bottom of its chin, but tragically it was nowhere near big enough for him to have any hope of breaking through with his hands. He snarled his teeth together and used the Gaia Temporis against to get away before the beams locked back onto his location.

Kokoro squeezed her hands shut and the light quietly disappeared into her fists. The wisps of emotions unleashed from her wings whittled down, and from her hands she drew blades of pure, mint-green light. With greater ease than her prior weapons she swung one blade above her head and brought it down. A gentle breeze kicked up as a wave taller than a skyscraper glided along the ground towards Alex.

He zipped to the right of it and drew his blade as the second wave came crashing down immediately after. He swung at the wave with all his might but found the dull edge of his blade rammed into his chest as his whole body was dragged back until the titan looked just as tall as him.

He mustered the strength to prevail and cut through the energy wave, but was panting many a tired gasp afterwards. He clutched his mouth shut and breathed out his nose, squeezing tightly around his blade before beginning a valiant charge back at the titan.

Kokoro continued to swing the blades in various directions with such fluid ease of movement that it was almost like she was wielding giant feathers. Each attack refused to make a sound and was filled with warmth, similar to a spring breeze.

Yet whenever Alex failed to cut or evade them, he felt weaker. It wasn't as though he was getting hurt. Rather, his will to fight was being peeled away bit by tiny bit. He trembled as he forced his heart to race and dragged his body through the sky towards a fight it was losing the desire to want.

But his mind refused to yield to this mysterious power. It raged like an inferno, wishing nothing more than to clear this obstacle from his path. It was also burdened with a weariness from this constant fighting, and wished these humans and Youkai would stop throwing themselves in this way.

Yet on top of this already volatile cocktail of emotions was an eagerness to see this battle end, because when it was through Yukari would have no more cards to play. She could no longer run or hide. She'd surely _have_ to face him at long last.

And that emotion was the strongest of them all. Its invisible grasp pulled his mouth to the sides in a wide, toothy grin as he widened his eyes and kicked up the pace to double, no, triple his speed! He bolted straight forth like an arrow and punctured the attacks Kokoro shot forth, eliminating their irritating hold on him as he rammed into the titan's chest not a moment after.

The whole heaving creature was made to lean back, its arms thrown towards the sky as it let out a quiet howl of pain. Alex hammered his fists into the creature's chest wearing that same grin he assailed it with, and quickly chipped away at its skin. The flurry of strikes kept the titan from rising up, and it seemed that Kokoro could not help it along no matter how hard it tried.

Down in the village, everyone watched on as she fought as their last line of defense against their imminent destruction. They were dead silent, their eyes no more full of life than that of a fresh corpse. They squirmed at the sight of their protector standing helpless against his undying wrath.

But after watching their aimless gazes for so long without a word, Tenshi fought past the excrutiating pain inflicted upon her face and coughed loudly throughout the crowd, "What ya'll standing around for dumbasses?!"

She spit up a good amount of blood and weakly raised a hand towards Kokoro as the crowd shifted their gaze upon her, "S-She needs help...?!"

"But what can we do...?!" A voice meekly yelled from a distance.

Tenshi barely had the strength to slap her forehead, but did so with the force of a hammer as she grunted angrily at everyone, "Look I don't fully get it myself...B-But I'm pretty certain Kokoro's pretty much a goddess right now! So...do what you do with other goddesses and give 'er your faith!"

They all widened their eyes and were struck with the same feeling over how obvious this should have been to them. Akyuu led the efforts by slamming her palms together and squeezing her eyes shut, working her brain into overdrive to deliver her prayers towards the sky.

"Please...save us all!" She begged with all her heart. Everyone else began to follow her example and closed their hearts to pain and suffering, replacing these feelings with a pure, unbridled hope.

Alex was making leeway on breaking through to Kokoro's location. With a few more punches he found himself a couple feet away from ripping the menreiki free from her shell. But then his fists smashed upon energy he could have sworn he'd already broke through, and he found that he was only getting further away, not closer.

"What's going on...?!" He cried out as he was flung out of the titan's chest, which rose back to full height with its body radiating with an intense, wavy aura. Its power pulsated like a mirage and reached for the skies. For the briefest of moments, Gensokyo was saved from the horrors of its demise, as the scars across the barrier crawled away from the center like a group of snails.

Kokoro opened her eyes wide and her heart felt heavy for reasons she could not describe. It was such a wonderful, overwhelming feeling of joy that brought her eyes to tear up once more. Yet there was something sorrowful mixed in, and she could feel a single life lose draw its last breath.

But that person, having performed the single most selfless act in her entire life, fell to the ground with a wide, satisfied grin. Kokoro's eyes trembled and she squeezed her fists tight. Her whole titanic shell lit up to cover all of Gensokyo in a flash of blinding light, then gathered all that energy into its fists and swung them high above.

Alex widened his eyes as the fists came crashing down upon him faster than he could blink. He was hammered into the ground and as the fists rose right back up he bounced up slightly with his body lurched back and blood spilling from a cough he produced on reflex.

He bit his teeth, the blood trickling between his gums as he exploded with raw energy and rammed himself up into the fists. He battered them multiple times to force them up, spreading burning, widespread devastation throughout the forest until entire trees were deprived their leaves.

After getting in range of Kokoro's chest he smashed his fists up in an uppercut to repel her arms and then charged straight at her. She widened her eyes and summoned all the energy she needed in a second to hold him off with a beam as big as her.

Alex pounded both his fists together into the center of the beam and knocked it to the ground, only for her to fire another off and drag him yards away. She followed up by firing a series of orbs from her wings and tossing them into his body.

A few met their mark before he drew his sword. The attacks were stronger than before, forcing his heart into a more docile state of mind. He grit his teeth and lashed out at the orbs with all his might while advancing closer to the chest. Kokoro kept her beam up, concentrating on him and nothing else.

He leapt over the beam and dove straight for her chest, impaling his blade into the thick energy comprising the skin. But a geyser of energy gushed out and swept him away, like he had just popped a balloon filled with water. The energy was full of the people's hopes and dreams, their intense faith scouring the gristled rage off Alex's heart for a few brief moments and reminding him of what he once had.

Yet the longing for what used to be and what could have been only made him angrier towards Yukari, who robbed him of his possibilities for the future. He grabbed his sword in both hands and flung himself towards the titan roaring at the top of his lungs.

He stabbed his blade into the geyser and quickly slashed upward, divert the energy's flow straight up the chest and across the titan's face. The mask split down the middle and slowly fell apart. Alex dug his sword in deeper until the whole thing was wedged into the titan's skin, forcing flames deep within to attack Kokoro.

As she was roasted alive by those flames she wore a terrifying scowl and squeezed her fists tight. The titan's broken mask crashed to the ground, revealing her own face behind it. The hat burned off, and the flames covered the front of her face to transform into a wolf's mask.

"RAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!" She let out a blood-curling scream as red energy shot forth from her body and overloaded the titan, causing it to generate its own heat that left Alex in a sweat as he was forcefully thrown back.

He dropped atop on of the still standing trees and was dwarved under the shadow of the raging titan, whose "wings" parted into a set of nine tails that each wielded their own trio of naginatas. The titans hands grew sharps claws, and hunched over like a beast on the hunt. The skies of Gensokyo roared with thunder, and clapped to the beat of its own drum.

" _ **You'll pay...YOU'LL PAY!"**_ Kokoro's voice was more god than Youkai at this point. Her rage shook the heavens of this dying world, and left the ground splitting open and spewing fire into the air.

Alex swung his sword to his hip and faced the goliath without a hint of fear in his eyes. His body burned bright with fire as he leapt towards the monstrosity, unbridled in his determination. The titan madly swung its claws at him, ripping and tearing through the sky like paper as lightning crashed down around it.

Alex paused for milliseconds at a time and sped between the gnashing claws. He got closer and closer, believing that this rage would have weakened the titan's defenses. But then the claws bridged together before its chest and pulled apart, throwing him far back with its burning hot pressure.

Alex swung his wings back and charged again. This time one of the tails stirred and stabbed its naginatas down where he was. He flung back and kept his distance as the naginatas sent waves of energy across the ground upon impalement. Waiting for his chance to strike he cut along the sides of the energy to build up heat, then slashed out with all his might, cutting through all the weapons' staffs along with the tail that twisted around it.

The beast dragged its tail back with a screech and slowly reformed it to full size. It drove more of its tails into the ground and riddled the grounds of Gensokyo with its energy. Alex tried as he could to avoid them, but they were so big, so numerous, it was factually impossible to do so.

But he just kept coming back for more. He cut the tails off with his blade and looked no worse for the wear. His body was sore, but he denied all the pain. His heart was ready to burst, so he forced it to stay together.

It should have been obvious to the survivors from the start that this was no longer the Gensokyo they knew. It was now a battlefield for these two rage-filled juggernauts, whose tireless war was waged without an end in sight.

Was this really the end that was desired? Was this world always meant to end this way? How could fortune be so unfavorably to these folks who only wished to live and survive day by day? Cruelty comes in many forms, but this may perhaps be one of the worst ways it has chosen to manifest itself.

Alex threw his hands back and charged flames that grew to be twice as large as his body, and fired out a massive beam that covered the titan's whole body. The beast used all nine of its tails to cut the flames down to trite embers and then let out a roar.

Alex bit his teeth down and reached his arms towards the heavens, dragging the lightning down at the monster's sides. He clapped his hands together and forced the lightning to meet together, creating a gigaton lightning bolt that covered the entire surface of Gensokyo with prickling static.

But the titan stood tall, using its tails to absorb the lightning into its naginatas. It threw them into the sky, where they crashed down in a single line in Alex's general direction. He was caught up in their descent and pinned to the ground, where the lightning burst into the sky and the naginatas faded to dust.

Alex coughed and wheezed as he dug his hands into the ground and pulled himself back up, his arms swaying around as he panted and firmed his glare towards the towering titan. He squeezed his hands tight and ripped the ashen trees from the ground, throwing hundreds of them all at once into the beast's body.

They crumbled to splinters as they grinded up against the titan's skin, then became wooden dust in the wind as he pressed them further down. Alex threw a massive fireball over his head and ignited all the dust, consuming the titan in flames once more.

It wreathed itself in those flames and let out a melacholic howl as it reached out and plucked Alex out of the sky. He pushed out with all his might as the claw raised him up high and smashed him flat upon the ground. It then dragged its claws back, preparing to scrape him along the way.

Alex reached into his pocket and used the Gaia Temporis to stop time right as the claw rubbed up against the back of his skull. He flew high above and resumed time the second he dove straight at the titan's chest. He threw a right hook, then a left hook, then pounded away one punch at a time.

Every punch he heaved. Every time he pulled back he felt his lungs ready to cave in. He was physically and mentally exhausted, but somehow was able to keep striking with all his might. His knuckles were bleeding profusely and the skin peeled down to the bare bone. He saw Kokoro's crimson, rage-filled eyes gleaming at him through the beast's thick skin and found himself getting angrier at their sight.

"I won't die...I WON'T DIE!" He screamed raspily into the night as visions of the one he loved burrowed into his mind, pressing him further onward.

The visions started to shrivel up and become static-y in appearance, and as a bitter quiver riled up Alex's heart he closed his eyes partway and let out an anguished gasp. The titan squeezed Alex in its grasp and held it before its face, staring deep into his soul with its penetrating, lupine eyes.

Alex exploded with electricity and forced the claws aside, then rammed into the mask with a single punch. The head cracked and creaked as it turned to put its gaze level with Alex's body. He shriveled up and slowly staggered back as found himself no bigger than its pupils.

His heart raced as he knocked to the ground with a single punch, and the beast threw its naginatas to the sky once more. Alex pitifully rolled to the right while coughing up blood, his body tossed around by the shockwaves the weapons made upon the ground.

He bounced around, crashing through the few trees that remained in the forest until finally falling flat on the back in agonizing pain. He breathed heavily and gasped for air as he looked towards the sky. The cracks in the barrier were slowly turning red. The world had less than half an hour left...

And it appeared to him, that he had even less time than that. He couldn't fight rage with rage. It was like fighting fire with fire. All his attacks could do no harm because by the titan's very nature it was made of the same emotion that he was striking it with.

But he was filled with nothing but rage. Rage, and anguish. He bit his teeth and squeezed his fists while attempting to stand on his own two feet, only for his right leg to drop on its knee and his coughed up blood to splatter atop his left knee.

The titan grabbed onto him once more and this time, Alex didn't resist as the beast squeezed and dragged him towards its chest. It pushed him inside itself, where his body drifted through the thick, murky red energy until arriving at Kokoro's mercy.

The menreiki's red eyes still trembled with tears, and her lower lip was curled up ever so slightly. She raised her right hand up high, summoning a single mask into her grasp. Alex was on his knees, his arms too limp to even move. The paralyzing fear drawn out by Kokoro's rage kept him too weak to put up a fight.

He stared at her, and found this sight pitiful.

Everything was wrong. A girl like her didn't look fit to wield the power she did, nor was this rage a welcoming emotion to one so innocent of mind. But that was just the truth of the world now. Everything was wrong. Gensokyo had been transformed from paradise into an inhospitable Hell...And he knew that he was partially to blame for this.

Driven by a lust for revenge, Kokoro tightly wrapped her fingers around that mask and forced it onto Alex's face while screaming, "THIS IS FOR MOM!"

The mask shattered and its energy was absorbed into Alex's body, making it shake and quiver like mad. She summoned another mask in her other hand and did the exact same thing as before, "THIS IS FOR DAD!"

Alex's heart sank to his stomach as the menreiki went on to force two more masks upon him in quick succession, "THIS IS FOR TENSHI...AND MAMIZOU...!"

When finally, she raised her hand up high and tightly wove her fingers around one final mask, bitterly ramming it into Alex's head and nearly breaking his neck in the process, "YOU...WILL FEEL THE PAIN...OF EVERYONE YOU HURT...EVERYONE YOU KILLED!"

As that final mask broke, Alex's head sagged to his chest and Kokoro squeezed her fist up against the front of his face before slowly drawing it back, trembling from head-to-toe.

"But you...you don't feel anything...You're just a horrible! Heartless! MONSTER!" She grabbed onto his neck and forced his head up, only to be stunned by the tears that came flooding out of his blank eyes.

"...N-No..." She didn't want to believe it. She threw her hand away from his body and swung her fists down, stamping the ground, "No no no! You're lying...! You don't feel anything! How could you possibly feel sorry for what you've done?!"

Alex whispered a response, "Do you think...I _wanted_ to kill any of them?"

His body rose to its feet like a marionette as his eyes refused to close and continued to shed numerous tears, "They decided what the rules were going to be from the very start...My life...or theirs..."

"I **respected** some of those people I had to kill...Like your 'father'...and your 'mother'...Do you honestly...honestly think any of this was easy for me...?" He hadn't the strength to yell, even though deep down he wanted to scream.

Kokoro shook her head and continued to yell out in rage, "I DON'T BELIEVE YOU! Y-You enjoyed it...every last bit of it!"

"...Even I don't know what to believe about myself anymore...B-But...I do know one thing..."

"Ghhhkk...!" Kokoro's head lurched up, as silently Alex snuck his blade through her chest and propped his limp hand around the back of her neck, pulling her in close so he could whisper in her ear, "I can't be stopped now...If I die here, without taking Yukari with me, then everyone I killed will have died for _nothing_. So even if the weight of your souls is enough to drag me down to Hell, I don't care...As long as **she** can live the rest of her life in peace, then my existence will have had meaning."

Alex ripped the blade free from the tsukumogami's chest and felt the guilt depart from his body as he murmured, "Farewell...Hata no Kokoro..."

Kokoro's eyes remained widened in stunned silence as her body fell back, bleeding upon empty air. Alex flew out of the titanic shell as he felt the power within begin to swell. He quietly turned around and watched as, without anything to channel and control its power, the lupine titan's energy spiraled out of control.

Energy geysers erupted all across its gargantuan form, as with its last breaths the titan howled into the dark of night with nothing but remorse. Alex stared blankly down at the village, failing to notice the menreiki's blood splattered on his face.

He could only imagine how many of them cowered to the ground, trembling with a paralyzing regret as the titan exploded, vaporizing the entire village and leaving behind a crater that burrowed into the bottom of Gensokyo, where only the starry void of space resided...

Alex lowered his sword and dispelled it, then closed his eyes and swerved away. Leaving this wasteland of a world at his back, he descended for the final location with any speck of life remaining...The Hakurei Shrine.

 _Population of Gensokyo:_

…

 _ **1**_

 _Next Time: The Story of Eastern Wonderland_


	16. Chapter 16

_Its the middle of Fall. On the grounds of the Hakruei Shrine a young girl with red-white clothes and a bow too big for her head sweeps away the autumn leaves. Everytime she thinks she's making progress, more leaves take their place. She's covered to her ankles in the darn things, and there doesn't look to be an end in sight._

" _Augh...!" She groaned as she propped her hands under her chin and laid atop her broomstick with her face slumped, "It never ends!"_

 _After puffing her tiny cheeks the girl looked at the leaves and a cheeky grin crossed her face. With a slight groan she dropped the broom to the ground and pulled out a gohei with two tassels dangling from the top. She waved it out in front of her body and squeezed her eyes shut._

" _Come on you cruddy gods...Can't you get rid of these pesky leaves for me?" A wind started to blow from her left, making her smile as she turned her head and gloated proudly "Ha ha!" as she opened her eyes to watch the leaves receive their due punishment._

" _Hey! Outta the way!"_

" _Eh?" Instead she widened her eyes and was forced to throw herself to the ground as something careened on by out of control overhead, slamming into the grounds of the shrine and kicking up a mighty wind that blew the leaves away._

 _After the wind settled down and the dust finished resting atop her back, the little girl rose to her feet and meekly stared at the front of her shrine. Smack dab in the middle of the front door was a girl roughly her age and size, her black-white witch's dress laying upside-down over her body and giving a clear shot of her bloomers. Beside her lied a broom that was lucky not to be in pieces._

 _The maiden walked up to this strange as they rolled on their rear and took off their witch's hat to rub the top of their head. The girl had fair rosey cheeks and long blonde hair, some of it braided to her left. Squinting her eyes and patting her gohei over her shoulder, the maiden grumbled, "Just who the heck are you?"_

" _Mrrgrrgrr..." The other girl continued rubbing her head as she slowly stared up into the maiden's eyes, the two blinking at each other as the maiden leaned a little forward and shrugged her shoulders in an attempt to entice and answer._

 _Suddenly, the girl sprung to her feet, swung two fingers forth in a "V" shape, and slammed the hat back atop her head as she declared, "Marisa Kirisame! Magician Extra-Ordinaire! At your service!"_

 _The maiden looks back at the streak of black soot running up to the shrine then at Marisa's sneering face to say, "Don't look that extraordinary to me. In fact you look pretty ordinary..."_

 _Marisa laid her hands behind the back of her head and chuckled, "So I'm a work in progress, what's it to ya?!"_

 _The maiden planted a hand on her hip and said after a sigh, "So what, you were trying to learn how to fly?"_

" _Yep!" Yelled Marisa as she plopped her bottom onto the porch and kicked her legs up, "Someday I'm gonna fly so high that I'll be able to see aaaaall of Gensokyo!"_

" _When did I...?!" Flabbergasted, the maiden sighed again and sat down beside Marisa, mumbling "This girl..." to herself as the two took a look at the bright blue sky. After a few seconds of silence Marisa leaned right into maiden's line of sight and yelled, "So what's your name?!"_

 _The maiden's heart leapt out of her chest as she dryly fumbled with her response, "R-Reimu Hakurei..."_

 _Marisa's eyes lit up like as stars as she pulled back and proclaimed, "You are?! Wow!"_

" _What? Who else could I be?" Reimu spoke with a nasty glare._

" _I dunno, some squatter I guess!" Marisa said with a smile._

" _You're a weird one..." Reimu sighed and shook her head._

 _Marisa sprung back to her feet like a grasshopper, whisker her broom into her left hand, and pointed it straight at Reimu's face as she declared, "Fight me!"_

" _...What?" It took a few seconds to process that simple demand with an even simpler response. Reimu tilted her head and mouth and muttered, "You musta hit your head hard..."_

" _Nuh-uh!" Marisa expressed so plainly, "You're the most prestigious name in all Gensokyo! So if I beat you in battle, then everyone will recognize ME as number one!"_

" _Grrr..." Reimu stood up, planted her gohei firmly atop her shoulder, and stared aside with one eye open, "Listen you. I only fight Youkai with my tools._ _ **Not**_ _humans."_

" _Heeheehee...!" Marisa raised her hands aloft and surrounded herself with a plethora of tiny stars, "What, ya think these are just for show?! I can take ya, no problem! Unless the great Hakurei Shrine maiden is a big_ _ **chicken**_ _."_

 _Reimu grit her teeth and sternly closed her eyes until it felt like a vein was about to pop in her forehead, "Ok fine. You wanna piece of me?"_

 _She twirled aside to face Marisa and proclaimed with her gohei swung down, "Just don't go crying to mommy when I beat you!"_

" _Ha! No need to worry about that! I ain't got no family or home of my own!" The way that Marisa cheerfully declared that brought a brief look of shock and pity into Reimu's eyes, but then the witch had to ruin it by so bluntly deciding, "But once I've beaten you, I think I'll turn your shrine into a witch's hut!"_

" _Ha!" Reimu scoffed, "Over my dead body!"_

…

…

…

Marisa sits. Alone on the Hakurei Shrine's porch. Reimu's dead body lied cold to her right, her face preserved in that same dead look of shock as before. The witch hung her head in silence with her hands wrapped tight around the knee caps.

A deaf explosion goes off, and she somberly looked towards the night sky to find the red titan had vanished with but a final moan of anguish to its name.

Shedding a single tear while biting the edge of her lower lip, Marisa grabbed the rim of her hat and stood up while muttering to herself, "Guess its time, huh, Reimu?"

She faced the empty horizon with a quiet chuckle. As she did, Reimu's right pinky made a single twitch...

 **Chapter 16: The Fall of Memories**

Alex climbed the long, winding staircase to the Hakurei Shrine alone. The grief that resided in his heart was the only thing that resembled company, but it paid him a hefty cost. His body was numb down to the ankles, and his feet felt like they were chained down by anchors the size of mountains.

He didn't know where he was going, or what he expected to find, but as the world broke down around him he'd forever be reminded of what he had done. All that was left was the hope that killing Yukari would make all these corpses piled up worth it.

He reached the top and paused at the gate. It took him a second to recognize that he'd finished the climb. It seemed so much longer than his feet would lead him to believe.

But there he was. Face-to-face with the Hakurei Shrine, as pristine as he remembered it. It was perhaps the only thing left of beauty in all Gensokyo. But he couldn't look back to check. He had to just keep moving forward.

A couple steps forward and his feet bumped into something soft and small on the ground. That he wasn't surprised that it was Sukuna spoke volumes of how much this world had changed. However...

" _Her needle has blood on it...And the blood has pooled near her neck..."_ Alex closed his eyes and stepped over her. After a couple more steps he looked up again and saw Reimu's corpses lying on the porch...And Marisa standing up beside it. Her face was shrouded in the shadows of her hat.

Alex squinted his eyes and murmured, "So...You're still here."

"Yeeeep!" Marisa said with a smirk.

Alex looked back at Sukuna's body, then Reimu's, and finally everything clicked with him. Tragically, Suika and Ran hadn't been lying. The one responsible for Reimu's death was...

"The Miracle Mallet...Sukuna Shinmyoumaru attempted to wish me away, and the Mallet interpretted that the best course of action was to kill Reimu and hope I die when Gensokyo fell."

"Might've been..." Marisa shrugged, "Maybe...It thought death woulda been an act of mercy for us."

Alex lowered his head a little and bit his lower lip. Marisa shook her head and said in a sour voice, "Though what's it matter now? End of the day its still just me...and **you**."

"...I'm sorry." Alex said in earnest.

"Sorry..." Marisa laughed dryly to herself and smile, "Sorry...Ya say."

She could be seen trembling as she bit her teeth down and squeezed her hat. Then she muttered out, "Y'know...I'm pretty pissed off right now."

"And you have every ri-"

"Can't you just can it for a moment?" Marisa stamped her foot down and twisted the dirt under her heel. She slowly breathed in and out for a bit, mouthing some words but looking hesitant to say what was on her mind.

"...I-Its just...I've got every right to give ya a piece of my mind. You killed a lotta people I knew today, a-and if it wasn't for you Reimu..." Marisa bit her teeth down and looked ready to throw her hat on the ground.

But instead she declared, "But **she** let this happen. She's sat on her laurels doin' nothing but letting us go out there and die. Ain't the first time its happened lately either. The Urban Legend Incident, the Lunarian Invasion...She was perfectly content letting us sort 'em out on our own even with Gensokyo's safety at stake!"

"I don't give a rat's ass what you got against her, or what she's got against you. Both of ya shoulda had the decency to sort it out on your own and leave the rest of us the Hell alone!" Marisa's bitter scream came with a tearful wobbling of her voice, as though these words had to be wretched up from a broken heart.

Alex felt a chill down his spine and lowered his head some more, allowing the magician a chance to weep in silence. When she was done, she pulled her hat entirely over her eyes and murmured, "And you know what's the worst of it? ...I bet if you'd just come and talked to Reimu first, she woulda taken your side."

"...I didn't think she would, since she's the one Yukari paid attention to the most." Alex spoke with pure honesty.

"Heh, guess you ain't wrong...I was the closest to Reimu, and even I had a hard time pegging down the kind of person she was," Marisa chuckled with a slight grin on her face, "Everyone always had these different expectations out of 'er...But she wasn't a saint, or a devil. She was just...Reimu."

"...But I guess I'm just rambling to the wind at this point, ain't I?" Marisa began to frown, "Gensokyo's got maybe ten, fifteen minutes tops left before it all goes kaput. It don't matter what I do at this point...If I fight you like the rest, then I know I lose. And if I can't beat you, I sure as hell can't beat Yukari."

Alex raised his head and was piqued by curiosity, "Then what do you plan to do?"

"...Heh," Marisa's bright smile shone through the dark night as she proclaimed without fault or flaw, "If this is to be Gensokyo's end, then I challenge you to one last Spell Card Duel!"

"A Spell Card Duel...?" Alex was taken aback for a moment. It had felt so long since he had heard those words uttered. In fact, it was surprising that none of his fights to this point had wound up a Danmaku duel. Truly though, the blame lied at his feet.

He raised his brows and inquired, "What can you gain from this Marisa Kirisame?"

"I **know** you can leave Gensokyo without any complications. So if I beat you...I want you to take me to the Outside World."

"Oh?" Alex wouldn't admit it, but he was vastly intrigued by her intentions now.

"Maybe its a fool's errand, but just because Gensokyo's gone...Don't mean the magic'll go away. Even if it takes me the rest of my life, I'll find a way to reconstruct Gensokyo back to its original state, warts and all."

"That won't bring the people back to life." Alex bluntly said.

"Pshaw! That's quitter talk, and I ain't no quitter!" Marisa's excitement quieted down to a somber tone as she forced a smile and said, "...But be that as it may...If you do happen to beat me, then I want ya to kill me. And make it quick."

Marisa smirked and proclaimed, "But that ain't gonna happen! I may not be the best Spell Card duelist in Gensokyo, but I've sat proudly at the number two spot for over 15 years!"

She finally lifted her hat up and her eyes shone with an undying vigor. She swung her right hand out and her broomstick flew into its firm grasp. With a fierce smile she proclaimed at the top of her lungs, "I'm Marisa Kirisame! Magician Extra-Ordinaire! At your service!"

She hopped atop her broom, sitting with it aligned left-to-right below her bloomers, and laid her hands upon the rest of the stick before taking flight over the Hakurei Shrine. Alex blinked at her a few times then shook his head, muttering to himself, "I didn't even agree to the deal, but..."

He kicked off the ground and lined himself up with Marisa. Swinging his right hand up he smiled for the first time in a while and exclaimed, "Come at me Marisa Kirisame! And prove the strength of your spirit!"

"Heh...!" Marisa put her hat down one more time to mutter to herself, "This one's for you...Reimu..."

The two fighters then echoed a scream to the empty skies of Gensokyo, " **DUEL!"**

 **ORDINARY MAGICIAN:** _ **MARISA KIRISAME**_

Marisa swung her right hand up and drew a familiar glowing card between her fingers. She glided it across the air until it was before her chest and called its name, "Unsealed Magic 'Open Universe'!"

The blast of air signaling the card's release was followed by Marisa's body becoming surrounded by seven moon-like objects that traveled outward in a clockwise pattern. They zoomed through the skies and left large trails of tiny blue stars in their wake, creating something resembling a multi-pointed star for the briefest of moments.

Alex swung to the right and started throwing fireballs between the gaps in the moons to pummel Marisa, who took the attacks in stride and kept sending out more moons without batting an eye. These moons went counterclockwise this time, not even allowing the prior set of disappear before they sped off across the sky.

Alex was hit by a few of the stars they left behind as he grazed the southern most moon and swung his right hand against the empty air, smashing Marisa with a large lightning bolt. He then backed away and swung his hands down, building up fire below his palms in the midst of gliding around the many stars that littered his path.

The Danmaku tickled his body and made him feel somewhat nostalgic. His muscles that had grown accustomed to fighting brutal battles swiftly readjusted to the high-paced kinetic rush of dodging Danmaku, and his heart started racing as he found himself unable to get rid of this smile on his face.

He lashed his hands out and flung the fireballs as comets that streaked back and forth, guided by the waves of his hands. He blended them in with the moons to keep Marisa guessing where they'd come from next, but she didn't appear as though she'd be budging anytime soon.

Alex swerved to the right and narrowly pushed his whole body away from one of the moons spiraling out, which instead smacked the bottom of his legs. He swam into the dazzling sea of stars and used the closer proximity to deal greater damage to Marisa's Spell Card, starting by drawing forth flamethrowers from both his palms.

Though it turned out to not be a sustainable idea in the long run due to how thick the Danmaku flowed around him. Being battered by dozens of stars in the couple seconds he got to attack Marisa made him quickly withdraw to the rim of the battlefield and use those flames of his to hurtle more fireballs her way.

The amount of Danmaku was incredible. It was like flying amidst a snowstorm. Though all the stars looked the same, they each had their own unique feel to them that only someone like Marisa could have the dedication to pull off. She smiled with pride in her work as the bullets kept chipping away at Alex's body little by little.

But when it boiled down to it Alex had the superior firepower and managed to break Marisa's card after a little more back-and-forth from the two of them. Marisa floated amongst the glittering stardust that remained of her Danmaku and grabbed onto the rim of her hat.

" _Oi! Reimu!" Marisa, now a few years older yet still pretty short, flew down into the Hakurei Shrine as Reimu was attempting to enjoy a cup of tea inside. She took her broom into her hand and walked in with a smile._

" _Did ya hear about those new 'Spell Card Rules'? Its supposed to be a way of settling conflicts without causing mass destruction to Gensokyo!"_

 _Reimu grimaced as she put her cup of tea down on the table and turned her head. She had a somewhat narrow glare to give to the magician as she stated, "I know. I had to give them my approval the other day."_

" _Heh! Ain't that fortunate for ya? Now we can fight without the shrine paying for it!"_

" _...You mean without_ _ **you**_ _paying for it. You still owe me for the last dozen times we fought. The Spell Card Rules change nothing." Reimu made a minute effort to force her will upon Marisa, who merely shrugged it off with a wave of the hand and proclamation of, "I'll pay ya back once I become a world famous magician!"_

 _Reimu closed her eyes and picked her tea back up, while Marisa took to facing the sky with a smile on her face and a fist planted firmly on her hip, "Today's a nice day out ain't it? You really oughta come out and get some sun Reimu, you're looking pale as a ghost!"_

 _The shrine maiden glared daggers into Marisa's back as she responded, "Are you kidding me? Its sweltering out there. Sometimes I wish the sun would just...go away!"_

 _Marisa looked back up and noticed a strange scarlet mist begin to cover the skies and block out the sun. She squinted her eyes tight and murmured, "Hey Reimu, have you been keeping up your training with the gods or something?"_

" _No. Why?" Reimu turned towards the outdoors and fiercely widened her eyes. She stood up and ran for the door, pushing Marisa aside gently as she drew her gohei and proclaimed, "An Incident!"_

" _A what now...?" Marisa muttered in bewilderment._

" _A Youkai must be creating this scarlet mist! Therefore, it is an Incident!" Reimu proclaimed with utmost certainty._

" _So an Incident's a Youkai-caused problem? Heh, well then what are we waiting for?" Marisa hopped onto her broom and leaned to look over her shoulder with a wild grin, "First to solve this Incident owes me money!"_

 _She took off, and after a bit of flabbergasting about Reimu followed close behind..._

"Heh...! Round two baby!" Marisa drew her second Spell Card almost immediately and pushed it out before her face, "Magic Sign 'Illusion Star'!"

This time Marisa sent hundreds of green and blue stars in rings clockwise and counterclockwise from her body. They rotated where they emerged from until the emerging points resembled a perfectly round sphere. There was a little less room for Alex to squeeze between as he delivered his fireballs swiftly upon the magician.

But some of the stars appeared to be disappearing prematurely. Surely Marisa was up to some kind of trick but Alex was more focused with attacking than observing his surroundings. He kept up a steady bombardment of fireballs and weaved around the stars as best as he could manage.

Marisa suddenly snapped her fingers out and Alex found the area surrounding the two clouded up by a hefty clout of stars that had disappeared not too long ago. The walls of Danmaku collapsed upon his location all at once, and he just narrowly squeezed forth away from them.

"Whew...!" He panted once before returning to engage the magician with his fireballs. She gave a coy smile and shrugged before attempting this trick again with a new set of stars.

Alex flew to the right and crossed the magician a few feet before her face. Her eyes followed his every move with great attention to detail. He responded by blasting her point-blank with explosive flames then jetting back to the edge of the battlefield before the stars could swarm him.

He swung his arms back and drew flames in both hands. He glided around the stars and kept the growing sphere of fire concentrated solely on Marisa's body. The magician raised her brows and muttered a "Oh-ho!" out of earnest interest before those very flames were left sweeping over her body as a venerable tidal wave of fire.

She kept a hand firmly atop her hat and chuckled before repeating her Spell Card's illusionary trick a third time over. But before the stars could converge upon him like he was a black hole, Alex swung his right hand up and blasted Marisa with a lightning bolt, causing this Spell Card to break.

Marisa puckered her lips into a tiny frown then gave her widest smile as she swiped her right hand out and drew another Spell Card to the front of her body, "Loving Heart 'Double Spark'!"

Then she reached into her hat and messed around a bit inside...

 _In a night that seemed eternal, Marisa and Alice flew through a bamboo forest that seemed endless. They were musing to themselves about the state of this restless night, passing the time as they mowed down dozens of fairies and rabbits with their Danmaku._

 _But then out of nowhere, the two ran into Reimu and Yukari, who were also patrolling this forest to resolve the Incident. Reimu was feeling a little crazy that night and was throwing out accusations to Marisa._

" _So Marisa, care to explain why you've caused this endless night?" She said while patting the top of her palm with gohei, as though prepared to punish a child._

 _Marisa rubbed the back of her head with a gleeful smile and remarked, "Well...how do I put this Reimu..."_

 _Alice rubbed her elbow into Marisa's hip and muttered, "Quit the stuttering Marisa, just yell at her to get out of the way like you usually do."_

 _Marisa tilted her head and whispered, "What, and piss her off even more?"_

 _Reimu squinted her eyes while Yukari watched on in delighted amusement without a word, "Oh,_ _ **more**_ _you say? So you ARE hiding something from me about this night."_

 _Alice took the lead and proclaimed, "Give it a rest Hakurei. Can't you see that big distorted moon behind you?"_

 _Reimu glanced briefly over her shoulder and sneered, "Of course I did. What kind of a fool do you take me for? Lemme guess...That was your doing as well?"_

 _Marisa swung her hands up in defeat and shook her head, "Ah great. Guess there's no getting around this is there...?"_

 _Marisa slowly started reaching for the bottom of her hat while explaining to Reimu, "You're right. The endless night, that broken, warped moon...Hiding the human village, and putting hats on the stone statues?"_

 _Marisa thrust her other finger up at Alice and softly admitted, "It was all Alice's fault!"_

 _The puppeteer turned back with her face red with rage as Marisa whipped out her mini-hakkero from her hat, pointed it forward all set to fire and exclaimed, "Now bitch...!"_

"Get outta my way!" Marisa exclaimed as she pulled out TWO mini-hakkeros and crossed her arms, their fronts all alit with sparkling raw magical power.

Alex widened his eyes as two Master Sparks blasted forth from those mini-hakkeros before he could move an inch. Getting caught up in one of them felt like having a bit of his lifespan shaved cleanly off, but luckily it didn't last more than a couple seconds.

Marisa started firing off rings of red, yellow, green, blue and orange stars from her body at differing speeds, covering most of the sky by the time Alex finished shaking off the force of the Master Spark from his body. He sought out the gaps in the stars but found that they were few and far between.

Thus, keeping his distance seemed like the best course of action. Not like he didn't have a range advantage on his side. But as he started doing the usual business of tossing fireballs around like crazy Marisa fired off another two Master Sparks straight where he was.

Alex quickly barreled to the right before he was swept up once more, but now he was able to experience the Master Sparks quaking the skies as they traveled into the night and vanished as glittering sparkles in the wind, returning a brief splendor of beauty to the desolate lands.

Alex swung his hands up near his shoulders and thrust them out diagonally, throwing the fireballs in a curved pattern to get around any further Master Sparks Marisa was planning to fire. The stars were a nuisance to evade while dealing with the Master Sparks, so Alex just gave up trying and worried about the biggest threats.

Gensokyo's life was winding down. The cracks in the barrier were so numerous that their glows overpowered the pitch of black in the sky. There were no more raindrops to shed, no thunder to cry out.

Yet here Alex was, entertaining this girl's request for one final duel...And enjoying himself in a way he hadn't felt since he was with Shina. He didn't let his smile show through often, but his heart felt uplifted and was resonating with the energetic outlook on life Marisa continued to display through her Spell Cards.

It didn't feel right though. Not after everything he had done. The only way to truly enjoy this was to ignore the sky and pretend that Gensokyo was as it once was. But that'd just be cowardly, and Alex refused to run from the truth.

He'd keep facing Marisa head-on and not look back. He was giving her his all just like she did the same to him. And if he happened to lose, then he'd honor Marisa's request. He'd still be able to go after Yukari regardless...

While he was deliberating with himself over all this, he dodged a few more Master Sparks and as many stars as there were once trees in Gensokyo. Marisa seemed to be lasting longer and longer with every Spell Card she pulled out, but it didn't take much longer this time before Alex had managed to break her Spell Card.

She stumbled back a bit on her broom but clamped her hands down to remain stable. She lifted her head up and paddled her feet around, adrift in her thoughts. She raised one hand to the rim of her hat and gave it a twist to the right, then smiled and said, "Yep. Its no wonder you and that girl beat all those other guys...You got a lot of spunk, gotta admit!"

 _On what appeared to be any other day, Marisa dropped on by the Hakurei Shrine and saw Reimu fanning herself while laying back atop her porch. She plopped on down beside her and looked up at the sky._

" _'Nother hot day ain't it Reimu?" She said while tugging at her sweat drenched shirt collar._

" _You're telling me...Why's it got to always be summer? Can't we have an early fall or a late spring just this once?" Reimu barely had the energy to sigh she was so covered in sweat._

" _Hehehe. Oh Reimu, the god's aren't gonna give in to your every request y'know?"_

" _...You think?" Reimu turned her head aside to glare and then pulled her body off the ground, the sweat flying off the front of her face and onto her lap._

 _Marisa laid her hands behind her head and leaned back to get a better look at the sun. Without batting an eye she said, "Hard to believe its been over fifteen years since we became friends Reimu."_

 _Reimu squinted her eyes and muttered dryly, "I don't recall doing that. I just remember some crazy girl crashing into my shrine at Mach 3..."_

" _Yeah, good times...Good times..." Marisa slowly nodded her head then pressed her chin up to her chest and remarked, "But I'm glad I met ya Reimu. You pushed me to soar to greater heights when no one else would..."_

 _Reimu slanted her head and slacked her jaw in an odd manner as she asked, "Did you eat some wild mushroom on the way over? What's with this sudden sentimentality?"_

" _Heh, oh I dunno...Guess I just got to thinking after the last two Incidents. Y'know, after seeing the Outside World for the first time and all..." Marisa let her hat sink atop her eyes as she ruffled her lips like she was nibbling on a reed of straw, "Made ya feel a lot smaller, didn't it?"_

" _I guess so." Reimu responded right away._

" _Aww what the heck, this is just silly..." Marisa swung upright and grinned from cheek-to-cheek as she patted her hand firmly on Reimu's back and told her, "Lets have a Spell Card duel! Its been a while since we've just had one for fun!"_

" _In_ _ **this**_ _weather?"_

" _Of course! What beats the summer heat like a little Danmaku? The wind in your hair, the breeze of the bullets passing you by..."_

" _Alright alright. Anything's better than dying in a pool of my own sweat..." Reimu rose up and tapped her gohei on her right shoulder, then turned to Marisa and remarked, "But you better bust out some new Spell Cards. I've already figured most of yours out."_

" _Hahaha! Well, I do have a secret weapon..." Marisa leaned forward and winked her right eye, "But it ain't ready yet. Just you wait though...It'll blow your socks off Reimu!"_

Marisa lifted her hat up and smiled while a single tear rolled down the right side of her face. She swung her right hand out before her chest and called forth a sparkling Spell Card. She spoke the most proudly towards this one, yet her voice was also tinted with a twinge of regret.

"This'll be my Last Word. If this doesn't do it...then that's fine! But I ain't gonna go out quietly! All my years of hard work and dedication...Will be burned lovingly into your heart forever!" Under her breath, she could be seen muttering the words "Please work" ad nauseum as she activated the Last Word with a snap of the fingers.

"Last Word! The Grimoire of Marisa!"

Alex paused in place for a couple seconds and noticed that nothing was happening. Marisa stared blankly out at her extended hand for a few moments and then leaned back, looking quite content with herself.

Alex shook his head and threw a fireball at Marisa to start things off, but it phased right through her and caused her eyes to nearly bulge out of their sockets as she let out a clear, overzealous gasp.

Alex slowly withdrew his hand as Marisa put a thumb at the rim of her hat and propped it up with a grin, "Whaddya no, I finally pulled it off! A perfect copy of Reimu's Fantasy Heaven! Now anything you try and throw at me will just pass right on through!"

Marisa swung her right hand out with her mini-hakkero gripped firmly between her fingers and declared, "I told you didn't I? This is the culmination of all my hard work! Now try and survive it!"

Marisa's body lit up like a disco ball as a plethora of non-directional lasers shot out and spun around her. Quickly following up on that by summoning six of Alice's dolls to her sides, which sent out multiple rings of red Danmaku in rapid succession. When that didn't seem good enough, Marisa swung her left hand out and watery bullets began traveling in from both sides of the battlefield. This was already overkill enough, but then she started firing off her own starry Danmaku to join in with all the rest.

" _She wasn't kidding..."_ Alex said with eyes wide-open as he tried to weave around all these different kinds of Danmaku. But it was impossible. No one, not even Reimu, could feasibly graze all these bullets. This hodge-podge of differing shot types reflected the kinds of people Marisa had "borrowed" knowledge from over the years.

But there was a certain beauty to this chaos. It was the perfect reflection of Marisa's soul, which ran wild and free on her own terms. It also displayed how crafty she could be, and how far she was driven to be the very best. Seeing this much determination shine in her Last Word almost made Alex want to allow her the win right then and there...

But as she declared this to be a Timed Card, this was not something for him to decide. Either Marisa's Last Word would finish him off, or not. All he could do was keep trying to dodge around the Danmaku as best he could. She just sat away on her broom, watching him dance around for her own amusement.

Yet there was still one last trick to pull from her endless bag of tricks. She raised her mini-hakkero up as the first fifteen seconds of this Spell Card had passed and screamed "MASTEEER SPAAAAARK!" until her throat felt hoarse.

A massive beam of light cut a swathe through the Danmaku established already just to get to Alex. He flew out of the way but felt like his heart was about to burst from his chest. Marisa's mini-hakkero was smoking a bit as she put it down and watched Alex get bombarded with Danmaku.

He was starting to feel a little fatigued, especially after the tireless gauntlet of battles throughout the day. But as long as his eyes remained open he'd keep this duel going. Soon enough thirty second had passed on by, and Marisa raised her mini-hakkero for another Master Spark.

Alex didn't get out of the way in time and half his body was enveloped in the attack. He could still keep going just a little bit longer, the end felt close in sight.

Another fifteen seconds passed on by like the spring breeze and Marisa fired another Master Spark. Alex successfully dodged it but ran amok with a bunch of other Danmaku as punishment instead. He kept going strong, but he didn't feel he'd last much longer.

Marisa's mini-hakkero was on fire, smoldering her right hand with soot and ash as she wrapped both hands around it and poised it directly above her face.

Alex couldn't believe it himself. He had fought gods, demons and monsters, but this human, this ordinary girl, was probably giving him his toughest fight thus far, even if the manner of engagement was a far cry from the bloody affairs of the past.

And yet, the two could sense this duel was drawing to a close. Marisa squeezed her teeth together and braced herself atop her broomstick, then as the energy welled up inside her mini-hakkero to the point of exploding she let out one last valiant cry as the Last Word reached the exact minute mark.

"FINAAAAAL..."

" **SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRK!"**

Her mini-hakkero was obliterated as everything became swallowed up in a flood of bright white light. Alex closed his eyes and became just like the rest of the Danmaku, a simple obstacle to be swept aside without mercy. The searing pain of the attack lasted beyond the Spell Card itself for a good ten seconds, by which point Alex could safely open his eyes and look around.

He saw that Marisa had been knocked off her broom and fell flat on her rear. She lifted her head up and rubbed the back of it like she'd just tripped and fell and was chuckling as she admitted, "...Well schucks, guess I lost after all."

She hopped onto her feet and called her broom down into her hand. Alex landed a few feet in front of her and watched as she tipped the front of her hat up and said "A deal's a deal! Get to it!" like it was no big deal.

But for the first time in his life, Alex shook his head and said, "No. You beat me. I admit defeat."

"..." Marisa snarled her teeth and grumbled, "Ah for pete's sake...I didn't ask for your pity! I gave it 110%...There ain't nothing for me to ashamed about!"

She closed her eyes with a trembling smile and Alex's expression simply sagged in sorrow.

" _...I did make a promise..."_ Alex summoned his sword and angrily bit his teeth down as he charged forth and rammed the blade straight through Marisa's chest. She just stood there motionlessly, suspended in place by the girth of his sword as the blood oozed out from her back.

She held onto her broom and placed her other hand on Alex's shoulder as he shook. Before she fell to death's thrall, she whispered into his ear, "But you better bury Yukari thousands of feet under...Cause if ya don't, I'll be haunting yer nightmares 'til the end of days!"

Dying only as someone of her nature could, Alex did not rip the blade free from her chest. He slowly took it out and laid a hand on her back, lowering her to the ground with her broom still in hand and a smile plastered upon her pale face.

He closed his eyes and felt the emptiness of the world suffocating him. Now there was truly no one left in Gensokyo besides him...

But at the crux of the world's demise, everything felt eerily silent. The atmosphere was plagued with an otherworldly chill, and a wind as haunting as death's touch rode in from the vacant Hakurei Shrine. Alex's body became empty as he opened his eyes and raised his head towards the shrine, where it was vacant no longer...

There stood a maiden. A maiden dressed in clothes as white as snow, and skin as pale as clouds. The only traces of red were the thinly ribbons keeping her sleeves attached, and the faint glimmer in her irises. She stared down at Marisa with an empty expression, and the feelings of melancholy radiated outward from her body and dropped the temperature to sub-zero levels.

Alex's body rose to attention towards this person, whose appearance he could not forget. Yet it should have been impossible for her to exist in this state. It was not truly a part of **this** interpretation of events. But there she was, redefining what was truly impossible.

Reimu Hakurei...had come back to life.

 _Next Time: Concealed the Conclusion_


	17. Chapter 17

_Who is...Reimu Hakurei?_

 _Obviously she is a shrine maiden. The one who protects humanity from the Youkai._

 _But who_ _ **IS**_ _she?_

 _Some would say she's a hypocrite who invites Youkai more than she slays them. Others would say she's a kind and caring person who watches over all. Others know her more for her abrasive tongue and brutal honesty. Others have seen only her greedy and mischievous side._

 _There are many interpretations for the one called Reimu Hakurei...None of which are actually wrong in the long run. As the Eternal Shrine Maiden of Gensokyo, I have watched over her growth with vested interest from afar, ever since she was a little girl._

 _She didn't grow up with parents. Nobody knows what happened to them, and that is yet again something with many interpretations to unravel. Yet despite no parentage, Reimu performed her duties as a shrine maiden to the best of her ability. She wasn't perfect, but she wasn't terrible either. She did the necessary amount of work and nothing more._

 _She was one of the ones responsible for the creation of the Spell Card Rules, albeit moreso as the one to sign off on them more than being involved in writing the rules._

 _She used them to great effect to defeat the vampire, Remilia Scarlet, on Gensokyo's first Incident. She then later went on to defeat Yuyuko, returning the essence of Spring to the world. During that whole affair, we met directly for the first time. We butted heads from the very start, but after a couple tea parties she warmed up a little bit more to my presence._

 _In fact, when it came to the Incident of the Eternal Night, the two of us worked together to unravel its mystery. Unfortunately, had she not got so caught up fighting her friend Marisa over a misunderstanding of events, perhaps she would have solved that Incident and not the Vampire and her maid._

 _But make no mistake. When it comes to Incidents there is little that can get in her way. She defeated one of the Four Devas of the Mountain, talked back to the Yama of Gensokyo, and even made her way to the Heavens above just to find the perpetrator who wrecked her shrine._

 _Throughout it all Reimu remained practically the same. She never really got any stronger, her talent was just simply that good from the start. Though I do admit I had to give her a gentle shove one time in order to get her to get better at summoning gods...You know, for my "invasion" of the moon plan and what-not._

 _Taunting her worth is certainly one way to get her motivated, as the Moriya Shrine readily found out upon their arrival in Gensokyo. Alternately, she has sometimes stumbled onto Incidents with nothing but intuition as her guide, such as when she discovered the trouble going on Underground, or when she realized that Buddhists and Taoists were seeking to free their masters from captivity._

 _Though it wasn't long after where she fell victim to her own greed and took part in the battle over which religion is superior in Gensokyo. Even if she ultimately ended up solving the Incident surrounding that, it did leave a bit of a sour note in the people's minds._

 _Then she went on to solve the Incident of the Miracle Mallet, the Urban Legends, and even cast away the Lunarians' mortal foe Junko from the Lunar Capital with little trouble whatsoever._

 _She's solved many Incidents, but despite all that she's done she only has enough food and money to get by day-to-day, has very few people she admits to being friends, and her odd behavior can be seen as quite the turn off. Yet she doesn't care at all what people think of her, for she will always protect Gensokyo first and foremost. Not because she was forced into the role, but because she knows that its the right thing to do._

 _And it appears even Death itself won't stop her from putting up her dukes and combatting one final Incident, huh, Reimu?_

 **Chapter 17: The Fall of Red**

The air was silent with the feel of an unnatural winter permeating the sky around the Hakurei Shrine. Alex stood up and stared straight at the white dressed Reimu, who stilled her eyes upon the body of her fallen friend and let her eyelids sag shut, the bottom of her eyes looking tired and wrinkled.

"You put up with so much of my selfishness until now..." She whispered with an unshaken belief that Marisa's departed soul would hear her voice. Then she closed her eyes all the way and uttered a solemn "I'm sorry..."

Alex's body shook. He'd seen many a spirit in his lifetime but nothing like this. There was not a single spark of life to this phantasm, and yet her body wasn't the least bit seethrough. Reimu was straddling the line between life and death, and had ascended to a plain of existence beyond what her mortality could allow. Without exercising a single bit of her power, the mere act of her raising her head sent a shiver down his spine.

He shook his head and leaned a bit forward with a growl of disdain, "You have some nerve showing up like this..."

He flared his eyes open all the way and thrust his open left hand down at Marisa, "She thought you were dead! She fought her hardest for **you**! And NOW you come back?!"

"I am still dead. My presence here doesn't change that." Reimu responded softly with her eyes shut and a partial frown on her face.

Alex knew he was wasting his time trying to yell at her. It was a gut reaction, an expected result of his immense confusion at how she's here...With **that** ghastly look. He shook his head some more, trying to rid himself of the chill her presence brought forth, and tried to make sense of all this.

"How are you even here?" He started with, "Sukuna-"

"Killed me with the Miracle Mallet. By pure accident, mind you. I hold no grudge against her for that..."

Speaking without a hint of anger or malice...Was this really Reimu Hakurei? Her voice was so soft and angelic, it alone brought some ease to Alex's puzzled heart.

" _No. That body, those clothes, that voice...Its unmistakenably her!"_ Alex screamed to awaken his mind ensnared by the serenity of her honeyed words.

Reimu grabbed the elbow of her sleeve in one hand and hung both arms down by her waist as she twisted to the left and kept her eyes off Alex completely. Winds from the great beyond rustled the rims of her dress like the leaves on a tree as she spoke with a shiver in her voice.

"It was...frightening to say the least. To die so suddenly, without a word...My spirit was left adrift in a sea of nothingness, unable to be judged or passed on due to your actions here..." Still she was without malice. Her words were neutral, a simple utterance to the truth to be precise.

"It felt like an eternity of waiting for the end to come, but...In truth, only a few minutes had come to pass," Reimu closed her eyes and her hair swayed beside her face, "I realized that in death, time becomes immaterial. And without a place to go, neither Heaven nor Hell, you could do whatever you want. The only constraint is the limits of your mind..."

Alex blinked a few times in surprise and then closed his eyes and muttered, "I think I get it now..."

"Yes..." Reimu interrupted fluidly, as though their minds had merged as one, "Without the flow of time to hold me back, I was able to train my shrine maiden powers to their full potential. And with my ability to fly, even the afterlife could not prevent my return."

Reimu waved her right hand up at Alex's body, obscuring it behind her palm alone as she remarked, "I watched you fight each and every person left in Gensokyo and came to an obvious conclusion..."

Alex grit his teeth and snarked in an amused tone, "Lemme guess, that I am the enemy?"

"That you cannot be killed."

Alex slowly raised his head and looked upon the shrine maiden's ghastly face as her eyes narrowed with a bit of scorn. Her power started to be released as white, wavy heat that glowed like the stars above, and as she clenched her hand into her fist she stated, "The way your powers work, that time-wielding stone, your sheer tenacity...Everything was stacked in your favor from the very start. Nobody ever had a chance of stopping you."

"...Tsk," Alex bit his teeth down and spat to the wind before muttering, "Yeah, I bet that'll make their souls rest easy knowing that bit of info now won't it?"

"They fought hard and bravely for this opportunity. Their deaths were the only way to move forward."

Alex's eyes flared open and he dug his feet into the ground until it began to crack, his body engorged with flames, "Don't you _ever_ say that in front of me again! They fought and fought and for what?! Yukari's dream, and little else!"

He lashed his arm out to the left and tucked the other into his pocket, "They won't be remembered by her! All she's ever cared about is this rotten piece of land! And now you have the nerve to spit in their faces by telling them all that they made a necessary sacrifice?! FUCK YOU!"

Reimu closed her eyes and let out a sigh, "I get why you'd think that way. But I am not making light of their deaths, nor am I commending them for dying. Its just a matter of fact that because they put their lives on the line, I was able to determine what to do."

"The wish made upon the mallet was for someone to come and stop you..." Reimu's eyes opened narrowly, the crimson glint of her irises peering through Alex's body, "That doesn't necessarily mean _killing_ you, now does it?"

Alex squeezed his fists tightly together and bit his teeth down as he thrust his left hand forward and yelled, "Tell me Reimu! I want to know...! Was Marisa telling the truth?! Would you have helped me stop Yukari if I came to you first?!"

"...Gensokyo's safety comes first. Given the circumstances at that moment, I don't know whose side I would have taken."

"That's not an answer!" Alex roared as he got fired up.

"You don't _deserve_ an answer!" Reimu roared back with a ferocity to shake the sky. Alex's flames died out and he reigned his body in a bit, the bottoms of his fists trembling as he tucked them into his pockets.

The shrine maiden closed her eyes and remarked, "The hands on the clock cannot be rewound. Gensokyo's fate has been determined. You made yourself its jury, judge, and executioner..."

She flared her eyes open and the heat surrounding her body evaporated the very air, creating a mirage like veil. She then poised her eyes at Alex's face and proclaimed, "My decision is made. This isn't about Humans or Youkai anymore...If you get past me, you'll raze entire worlds to the ground in pursuit of your 'justice'. I WON'T let you do that. Everyone who has died...I have become one with their souls! They are all shouting the same thing...To see you struck down!"

Alex swung his right arm out and widened his eyes with his sword drawn as Reimu firmly proclaimed, "Alex Whiter...The Phoenix of Destruction...In the memory of what Gensokyo used to be...I, Reimu Hakurei, will-"

Alex lunged forth and slashed down the center of Reimu's body. She stood still, the blade passing through harmlessly as Alex widened his eyes and slowly drew himself back. The shrine maiden scoffed and sneered, "Is. That. **All**?"

She then raised her hand up and blew Alex back to the center of the path leading up to the shrine with a soundless white blast. She levitated off the ground and approached the roof of the shrine in a few seconds flat. Alex shook his head and watched as the skies of Gensokyo twisted and turned, enveloping all but the grounds of the shrine in this distorted vortex.

"This shall TRULY be the last Spell Card Duel in Gensokyo's history! And you shall know defeat in no less than _six_ cards. Now...come at me with your best! You shall face me on **my** terms, Phoenix of Destruction!"

Alex snarled his teeth against his lips and kicked off the ground to meet her on even ground. He threw his sword to the ground and dispelled it, then raised his empty hands up by his shoulders and squeezed the fire around him between his fists.

"If I said it once I'll say it again..." He screamed at the top of his lungs, "Until Yukari is burnt to ash, I won't let any one of you stop me! If you want to die again for this cause Reimu Hakurei then you're more than welcome to!"

"I pity you...But nothing more..." Reimu closed her eyes and drew her right hand down by her hip. She raised it aloft and during its gentle glide the limb left afterimages in its wake. She summoned her yin-yang orbs and softly spoke, "You cannot defeat me. Your journey ends here."

 **SPIRIT OF GENSOKYO:** _ **I**_

"Now...Enough talk!" Reimu swung both her arms out and hundreds of bright orange seals flew forth from her sleeves. They weaved together into a tightly knit square wall and started to advance upon Alex.

He looked around for any way past, but found it had wedged itself perfectly between the confines of the vortex. As it drew closer, an opening formed in the bottom left corner and Alex flew straight towards it. He had milliseconds to get on by before one of the yin-yang orbs shunted itself through the hole.

He zipped to the right and shifted his gaze upon a second wall, realizing that Reimu hadn't yet called out a Spell Card. But make no mistake about it. This was Danmaku. Reimu was just finally utilizing the gaps between Spell Card to her advantage.

Alex had little time to find the second gap in the upper right corner of the wall let alone fly towards it. A second yin-yang orb flew through it and pinched his leg into the walls of the gap as he grazed on by. He tumbled out towards the middle overlooking the next wall and flew to the upper left where the next hole lied.

The yin-yang orb that flew through had a similar vibe to the first, and that was because it was the same one. It had simply made its way through a hazy rift to arrive back here. Or perhaps...it didn't need to move "back" at all. Alex started noticing that the cracks in the ground were the same size and shape as he remembered leaving them as before, and formulated that he was making little progress.

The walls were coming at such a high frequency that his brain had only enough time to process where the holes were, and thus his body took too long to get through them. When he attempted to make his way through a fourth wall, he failed to reach the exit in time, and the yin-yang orb sealed the way shut when it passed on by.

Alex made a hasty retreat, **losing** much needed progress. He found another opening in the upper left. Though as the orb passed through it it left behind a flurry of red spirit orbs to pester Alex on his way to it. He did make it out and started relying on instinct to get through the holes. If he failed to hit his mark, then he'd just take the loss and keep going. Ramming through a wall wouldn't be enough to defeat him, he believed.

Yet as luck would prove once more, he managed to pass through the holes without so much as a scratch on him. He wound up face-to-face with Reimu, who summoned the yin-yang orbs back to her side and summoned a Spell Card to her chest with merely a glancing thought.

She closed her eyes and the card broke apart, sending its wistful energies throughout the vortex. Alex attacked her with a hefty deluge of fireballs and managed to hit his mark every time. But he only managed to do so for three seconds before she widened her eyes and knocked him back to the edge of the shrine grounds with a bright white shockwave.

The vortex broke apart, but now the shrine was gone. In its place was a silent void, amidst it floating a sea of cherry blossom trees, with the towering Ayakashi planted in the center of it. The two drifted towards the front of the Ayakashi and, upon reaching their destination, a giant scarlet moon rose up from behind it and bathed the pristine pink blossoms in a crimson hue. The atmosphere was something out of a nightmare, but fixated entirely in reality.

Reimu's eyes shone as she finally declared the Spell Card's name, "Memoir of Denial 'Perfect Embodiment of Scarlet Blossoms'."

And she wasted little time in showing off what this card could do. Alex sped a few feet forward in an instant and pounded the air with his palms to strike her with lightning, but she merely drifted aside it and started to send curved, scarlet arrowheads out from her body in droves.

They homed in on his location with scarily precise accuracy. Alex had to evade them at the last possible second, lest they shift their path and bolt for his hips.

Petals fell from atop the Ayakashi and swayed to-and-fro on their way to the ground. They layered the whole battlefield with their tiny selves and provided an obstacle to Alex's evasion, for they too counted as Danmaku.

Alex rushed for Reimu and went for point-blank fireballs. She narrowly dodged away and the heat brushed up against her dress. She fired off more of the arrows and weaved around to the front of the Ayakashi, looking straight up towards the top.

A single scarlet bat and pink butterfly danced in circles before the moonlight, growing ever larger as they descended towards Alex. He blinked for a moment, and could have sworn he saw the shadow of Remilia and Yuyuko's silhouettes reflected upon the moon's surface.

The dancing fliers arrived next to Alex and started to dance around him, sticking to his presence like glue no matter how fast he zipped around. They released a steady string of Danmaku in their wake and it pulled inward towards Alex's, forcing him to move up and down more than he'd wish just to avoid being hit.

His fireballs connected with the flighty Reimu on occasion, but not enough for Alex's satisfaction. He switched from fire to roaring electricity, and weaved a series of lightning bolts through the air with gaps too thimble for her to make it through. When she was trapped between the lightning, Alex pegged her with fireballs, then repeated the process after the first lightning left his sight.

Reimu narrowed her eyes and kept grazing between the lightning as best she could. She tucked her arms against her hips and glided around the air like the graceful underwater dolphin, and never relented on her attacks.

Where there was a will there was a way, and eventually Alex saw the need to tighten the gaps between the lightning to put an end to her slippery endeavors. Reimu just hastened the release of her attacks in response, as too did the petals and butterfly and bat do the same.

Alex kicked up the pace and zipped around the battlefield at a breakneck speed to mystify Reimu. One second he was a few feet away, the next he was on the opposite side of the battlefield. He punched out a fireball every moment he stopped, but by going this fast he also let those flying pests around him spread Danmaku all across the sky.

In an attempt to play tricky, he was merely screwing himself over. And he knew it. The fact that he did brought a bit of a smile to Reimu's face, revealing once more that mischievous side of her that had appeared to been made dormant.

In a brief fit of anger, Alex lashed his right arm up and sent a scar of fire as tall as the Ayakashi hurtling towards Reimu. She widened her eyes and took its assault without blinking. She positioned herself upright as the Spell Card broke, the visage of the past crumbling away to dust as they were flung once more into the vortex.

"Can you truly afford to spend this much power on this game?" Reimu inquired with a calm, somewhat teasing voice.

Alex squeezed his flaming fist shut and scowled. Unlike the rest of the denizens of Gensokyo, he has had to rely on his own energy to create Danmaku in lieu of not having any Spell Cards. And he hadn't gotten much time, if any at all, to recooperate after dueling Marisa.

Nevertheless he squinted his eyes shut and chuckled, "I have energy to spare. You'll never tire me out with these cheap knock-offs of other people's cards."

"Then how about some more of my Danmaku?" Reimu swung her arms back and flung her yin-yang orbs at the roof of the shrine. They bounced off and started ricocheting around the vortex, leaving behind hundreds of glowing paper seals that interconnected like the links in a chain.

The orbs formed a set of diamonds then returned to Reimu, where with a snap of the fingers she sent the seals flying towards Alex. They moved slow enough that it was easy to pass between them and arrive in the center of the battlefield. He cracked a smirk and threw some fireballs and the stationary shrine maiden, who sent the orbs off once more.

They bounced around left to right and right to left, creating slanted lines with barely a feet worth of space between them. Alex squeezed his gut in and almost had the orbs ramming into his front and back, but still wound up surrounded. He flew up and let the seals follow him around a bit. But when he saw his opening, he dove straight down between the seals and planted his feet firmly on the ground.

The orbs bounced towards the sides of the vortex but swirled around and around. Where they'd stop? Only Reimu knows. They filled the entire perimeter with paper seals, and their glow made the atmosphere feel positively empyreal.

The orbs returned to Reimu's sides and started firing red spirit orbs throughout the confines of the vortex. The seals compressed down slowly, leaving less space for Alex to manuever around with each waking moment. Finally, when the tunnel was only as big as he was tall, the seals dispersed to the winds and Reimu placed her hands atop the orbs.

She looked over at Alex and saw the first signs of fatigue manifest as a slow pant. He raised his hands up and punched fireballs at her as she closed her eyes and summoned another Spell Card. This time when she unleashed its power, Alex was able to brace himself completely.

The vortex parted and the two found themselves floating down a foggy river, the sides riddled with tall bamboo stalks. The waters were dark with blood, and there was a lone boat ferrying itself along its surface. Reimu opened her eyes and looked no worse for the wear as she muttered this card's name, "Visionary of Anger 'Imperishable Phantasmagoria'!"

Alex looked down at the uneasy waters and saw them bubbling all around. That was just moments before towering Rods of Remorse shot up from underneath the surface, skewering the skies before him with a certain, realistic fury to them.

A sweat trickled down the back of his neck, as he felt a judgmental presence lingering behind him. He glanced back for a moment but not a moment further, for he realized that his body was being forced forward against his will. Bamboo reeds shot out from behind the towering rods to cut off most of his route, and one of them managed to scrape the front of his gut as he winded between them.

Reimu kept ahead of the towers and spread her seals out in waves between the gaps of bamboo. Alex sped up to try and get ahead of the bamboo, but even when punching it at top speed he couldn't make an inch of progress.

Death and the Eternal put their touch into this Spell Card, hoping to deliver a coup de grace to him from beyond the grave. But Alex merely scoffed at their wasted efforts and started hurtling fireballs out at Reimu. The bamboo shot out to intercept most of them, while Reimu's didn't bat an eye at those of them that did manage to make it through.

Alex thrust his arms at the bamboo off the riverside and ripped them out, snapping each one in two. He levitated them over the towers and thrust them down at Reimu, each one breaking down to splinters against her body.

Alex felt a peculiar sensation from his feet. It was wet like water, but cold like death. He looked down and saw that the boat was following him like a magnet and spraying foggy Danmaku up similarly to how a fountain would behave.

Rising up to get away was a terrible idea, as that just made the fountain rise and widen to account for this. Not only that, the towers rose after him.

Reimu was playing hardball with him. Not that he should have expected otherwise, but it certainly made things more troublesome than they were worth. He'd just have to act fast and keep up the pressure with the bamboo shoots lest the fountain prove to be his undoing.

The shrine maiden kept up her attacks for another twenty seconds before Alex's ceaseless bombardment caused this Spell Card to break. She closed her eyes and muttered aloud, "Two down...I suppose this has served as a fine warm-up."

"Don't give me that crap. If this is your last stand then go all-out Reimu Hakurei!" Alex yelled with his fists raised and his body burning bright with flames.

"But the question is...Do you deserve to see me go all-out?" She pondered with a subdued grin as she raised her right hand up.

With a quick glint of light, a ring of see-through white orbs dipsered throughout the perimeter of the vortex, leaving behind glowing dots every few feet. These dots fired thin strands of light that wove together with the others to create this finite, webbed nebula.

Reimu then flicked her right wrist out and blinding comets of light streaked along the lights at lightspeed, switching up which way they traveled with every ring of dots they happened upon. Alex didn't have the time of day to react to them all and just focused on avoiding the closest one.

He arrived in the center of the web and concentrated his fire on Reimu. He was feeling more tired than he was moments ago but hadn't lost the sight in his eyes quite yet. It was crystal clear the six glyphs that Reimu surrounded herself with, which shot interconnected grey paper seals at each other to form a six-pointed star before sending all the seals plus more flying in all directions.

Reimu glided to the right and repeated the process with the orbs as Alex continued to attack. She certainly made it easy for him, even if her Danmaku was doing more harm to him than his was to her. Just like with Marisa, Alex felt the longer this duel dragged out, the harder it was to break the shrine maiden's Spell Cards.

Nevertheless, after repeating her pattern a couple more times she floated on over to the center of the vortex above her shrine and knocked Alex back with a shockwave upon summoning her third Spell Card.

The battlefield shifted to yet another sight that was both familiar yet at the same time different. This time they were hovering over Suwa Lake atop the Youkai Mountain. Though, it wasn't fair to call it a lake in the traditional sense of the word.

The lake was composed of red fire of the hottest kind, much like what he saw Underground. The skies were orange, gloomy, and there was this giant black sun floating overhead with a ring of fire surrounding it. The clouds were gone, replaced with soot and smoke of the vilest calibur.

Alex looked away from the sun with an unflinching resolve and started bouncing fireballs towards Reimu, who spun clockwise above the lake, much like he found himself doing not long after. As he started to adjust the trajectory of his attacks the shrine maiden announced this card's name, "Bargaining for Faith 'Faith in Animism'!"

The lake started to bubble over with oil as six onibashira rose out from the perimeter to greet the two. But these were no ordinary onibashira. Carved into their tough as steel frames were the names of every last person that lived in Gensokyo, and died upon this day. And to make certain that Alex understood this, they were all written in English.

Alex's eyes trembled and he shifted his attention upon Reimu to keep attacking her with fireballs. She didn't fire a shot in retaliation, and left that up to the onibashira.

They released hordes of vengeful spirits that combed the perimeter of the lake on their way inward, passing through Alex's body and releasing their anger upon him. The guilt in his heart rose through his body like a plume of magma and made him cough, dropping his concentration bits at a time.

The vengeful spirits collided in the very center of the lake and burst into a shockwave of Danmaku shaped like a six-pointed star, each point connected to a different onibashira. Alex firmed his body and the fire in his heart boiled over into his aura, increasing the intensity of the fireballs he tossed.

Reimu closed her eyes and drifted along her merry way, leaving the spirits to do her dirty work for her. But they were enjoying every second of misery and pain they inflicted upon Alex, so being used as Danmaku was more joy than sorrow.

Alex paid attention to the onibashira that continued to rise. He felt heat rising towards the center of the sky above the lake, and suspected that there was still more to this Spell Card than meets the eye. He kept up the pace of his attack, his arms becoming complete blurs from how fast he fired.

But Reimu seemed adamant to not surrender this Spell Card until everything she had to offer had been purveyed. When the onibashira stood fifty feet tall, a ceremonial gong went off, its deep, penetrating echo spreading for miles out.

The rising heat manifested as a massive nuclear sun centered between all the tops of the onibashira. It released its power as a thick rain of fire, melting down the peerless steel with ease. Alex became further perplexed by the immense heat conjoining with the vengeful spirits' waltz, but lucky for him he only had to last this out just a _little_ bit longer.

But what ended up being a few seconds felt ten times longer. Reimu's Spell Card broke and they returned to the vortex, where Alex hung his head slightly and started having trouble keeping his arms up by his hips. A few sweatdrops trickled down the sides of his face, while Reimu looked as clean as ever.

The shrine maiden opened her eyes and gazed upon with a brief "Hmph". She then raised her hand up and remarked with a stern voice, "You're halfway there. But you will not make it through the rest unscathed."

Alex narrowed his eyes as his irises turned a fierce shade of red.

"I told you when we first met didn't I? There are certain laws you have to follow in Gensokyo...and for breaking them all, a fate worse than death awaits you, Phoenix of Destruction!"

Alex squeezed his fists and declared, "You were a fool to come back! Cause there is no such thing as a second afterlife!"

He reached up towards his forehead and drew his sword from a large wreath of fire, then swung it down by his hip. He wore a bitter scowl as he murmured without emotion, "I deny that woman's dream...Just as I deny your very existence, 'Reimu Hakurei'!"

Reimu squinted her eyes and gently nodded her head, "Very well...Then I will show you everything I've got, and deny your destruction from this world for good!"

 _Next Time: The Last Dreamer_


	18. Chapter 18

_There is something I wish to admit to you all before the end comes. I...may not get another chance to say this in the privacy of these words you read._

 _...I'm scared. Rather, that I can_ _ **be**_ _scared. I am frightened immensely by ideas of loneliness or loss. Its a remnant of my human self, I suppose. Yet I appear to have a knack for driving others away. I antagonized the original Hakurei maiden by accident. I drove Kasen away with my unyielding ideals for Gensokyo. I played too aggressively to gain Kokoro's attention. And Reimu..._

…

 _I'm stubborn. I admit that as well. If I wasn't, how could I have managed to get this far against the Phoenix of Destruction? But that also makes me stagnant. Gensokyo, its ways and its people, have changed while I am the same as I have always been. There's such a thin line dividing the identities of "Maribel" and "Yukari" that it makes me wonder if I am who I say I am or simply a mask protecting a traumatized child..._

 _...What is the point of my rambling, you may ask? Like I said. The end is coming. It is but a few chapters away. Then I may finally close this book, this part of my life, forever. And I'd like to leave you all with all secrets laid bare._

 _But enough of my meager distractions. Its time to draw the curtain closer on this final battle..._

 **Chapter 18: The Fall of Fantasy**

Amidst the vortex drifting between a far-off dream and an enclosed reality, Reimu crossed her arms before her chest and had long, silvery needles pinched between each finger.

Alex raised his sword and expected them to be tossed his way. The moment she budged he brought his sword down and lashed fired down her body.

She remained silent as the air around her as she tossed those needles diagonally in eight different directions. They bounced around dangerously close to Alex's comfort zone and weaved a web around his line of sight. Thimble strands of energy comprised the web, which was woven with such care as to leave gaps big enough for Alex to push through.

But Reimu would soon complicate matters by sending strings of glowing yin-yang orbs along the web. Alex swung his sword up with a swift, rough motion of his wrist and found his flames sliced up by the strings.

He slanted his eyebrows and glided inches at a time through the gaps, keeping a careful eye open for any of the traveling Danmaku. The orbs were barely the size of baseballs but made up for it with their speed.

Alex used up energy to send fireballs out until he could build strength in his blade. Then he took it in both hands and stabbed it between one of the gaps, hitting Reimu dead in the head with a beam of fire.

It may be a Spell Card duel, but it was getting annoying that she showed no signs of fatigue.

When the orbs reached the edge of the web they ricocheted around like a set of pool balls off the cue. Alex felt his body winced as they connected this way, but kept concentrating his fire on Reimu regardless.

It took more than thirty seconds of constant pressure before the web unraveled and Reimu relented to use her fourth Spell Card. She raised it up from the ether the same as the rest and activated it.

When they transitioned from the vortex the change in environment was nowhere as sudden as the rest had been. The Hakurei Shrine was dragged back into the vortex where it morphed via a misty distortion into becoming the Myouren Temple.

The dimension was white and foggy, empty like Miko's Senkai. So thus is was only appropriate that the Taoist's Divine Mausoleum stood as the Myouren Temple's reflection. Alex stared at the temple's front gates and those of the reflection, swearing that he saw their owners staring at him disapprovingly even after he blinked and rubbed his eyes.

Reimu closed her eyes and smiled a bit, no doubt enjoying the vanity of his struggle, and the weight of sin weighing heavily on his soul. But the time to drift between past, present and future was long passed, and with one hand raised high to the heavens she announced the Spell Card's name as, "Answer my Depression 'Ten Undefined Desires'!"

A dull ping echoed from afar as three rings rippled out from the bottom of the Myouren Temple. Then Reimu was found floating in the center of Byakuren's lotus sign, which the priestess once made great use of in her Spell Cards.

" _Why did it have to be her.."_ He pondered aloud in his head, _"Why did it have to be someone who would never take a life that brought me so close to the edge of death's door?"_

He let out a lone, dry chuckle at how it might have been better had he died then...But only if Yukari had been slain beforehand.

"This isn't the time to get distracted..." He slowly raisd his blade to the right and with a limp pair of eyes faced the immediate enemy ahead and swung a wave of fire at their body.

Reimu closed her eyes as the four corners of the lotus lit up and retaliated with rings of red and yellow Danmaku. Alex pushed onward through the rings and kept a steady assault up until giant, cloudy fists took swings at him from the left AND right.

He backs off in an instant and widened his eyes as a giant ghastly anchor rammed in a straight line towards him. He shifted to the right into one of the rings of Danmaku and the anchor crashed into an invisible wall, spreading dozens of watery bullets up towards Reimu.

The fists obscured the anchor and came out frequent enough that there was only a tiny space in the back of the arena for him to move around in. It wasn't difficult to get attacks off on Reimu, but dodging? Not so much. It wasn't long though until Alex heard the Spell Card breaking noise push away the Danmaku in his path.

And yet, the environment did not shift back to the vortex. Instead, the Myouren Temple and its "reflection" began to quiver like they were foggy shifted by the gentle winds of morning.

The atmosphere darkened to the dead of night and in a flash of light the two temples had changed positions, with the Mausoleum shining as bright as gold through the darkness. Reimu turned her body aside and was protected in the back by Miko's six petal, two-layered flower she used for some Spell Cards.

"Answer my Depression 'Ten Undefined Desires -2nd Half-'!" She spoke softly.

The flowers blossomed and stretched out to be fifty feet wide and tall, then released its knife Danmaku in the form of multiple rings. It alternated between the outer and inner petals, then kept repeating this until the whole sky was filled with its "pollen".

" _You also came close to stopping me..."_ Alex thought as he drifted between the knives, _"Would you have been able to succeed...If you knew everything about me? I doubt it..."_

Joining the initial Danmaku wave was a wooden boat different from the last that traveled left-to-right and sprayed foggy blue Danmaku across the sky, filling in the gaps the flower failed to touch.

Then came sets of yellow arrows that zig-zagged throughout like the shape of lightning bolts. Red arrows traveled between them in a similar path between the yellow ones, albeit somewhat slower.

It was just more annoying clutter to get around. But at least there was a little more space to maneuver around, and that was all he could ask for.

All these gimmicks and memories of the fallen warriors wouldn't best him. Surely Reimu couldn't be thinking that was she? No, there had to be some other trick up her dangling sleeves.

"A way to stop me without killing me..." He murmured aloud, "What does that mean?"

After another grueling, drawn-out battle of dodging and attacking Alex finally broke this Spell Card fully and the two returned to the vortex beyond time and space. Alex cockily raised his blade at the waist and smirked, "You're running out of tricks, Reimu."

"I'll fight to my last breath," Reimu turned her back towards Alex and glared at him with one red, glowing eyes, "Because I can't save Gensokyo...You'll be damn sure I'll avenge it!"

Dozens of chains composed of white seals shot out from the expanse of nothing at Reimu's back and whipped around a bit until finally settling upon thrusting themselves at Alex's body.

He zipped to the right and the chains broke upon an invisible wall, dispersing the seals to the four winds. Another set lashed out almost right away, so he went up to avoid it and kept attacking with the hot air off of his blade.

The chains got increasingly more aggressive to the point of one emerging the immediate second after the last emerged. In this snowstorm of seals Alex persisted on evading each and every one he could, gliding around Reimu's body and attacking her faster and faster.

But as to who would give way in their tactics first...Well, that should have been obvious from the start.

Reimu faced forward and the onslaught of seals reached its end. Alex floated up a few feet close to the shrine maiden and raised the tip of his blade to her unflinching face while waiting out her next Spell Card.

"Well? What's your next move?" He asked before being shoved back by the shockwave from Reimu's fifth Spell Card.

As it shattered softly the environment changed to become the endless, inner halls of the Shining Needle Castle. Alex knew where he was despite having not personally attended a visit to the place. The floor, however, was clear glass that allowed a full view of the moon floating in space.

In this atmosphere Reimu looked more like a twinkling star than a ghost. A deadly star mind you, but a star nonetheless. Reimu spoke the card's name as "Acceptance for The End 'Double Dealing Lunacy'" and then three large spheres appeared and formed a triangle at her backside.

Yellow for the Moon, Blue for the Earth, and Red for Hell. The spheres were perfect representations of those respective realms flaws and all. The one for Earth took prominence over the rest and surrounded Reimu's body. Then a small grey moon appeared and rotated around her, with a pinwheel of red star Danmaku firing off her in multiple directions.

The moon offered itself up as an umbrella, so Alex took it without hesitation. He directed his shots around the moon and slowly chipped away at the Earth shielding Reimu. Each fireball hit shrunk the barrier's size.

The moon started to shrink as well, making relying on it less than optimal. But when Alex got too close to it to try and make further use of its protective prowess, the moon expanded to twice its original twice and shoved him away. It stung quite a bit, for even as a shield, the moon still counted as a piece of Danmaku.

Upon reaching the size of Reimu's head the Earth barrier popped, along with the Danmaku associated with it. Before Alex could get a shot off on her she was covered up by the sphere of the moon.

Alex felt a pure chill run down his spine and looked back to find that the corners of this hall were being run over by hundreds of red, blue, violet and yellow orbs the size of his body. They all gravitated upon his location, so he quickly got to work attacking Reimu's barrier while zipping around the orbs, which seemed to have no end.

What's worse was that some orbs grew to cover more space while others shrunk to hit Alex unnoticed.

It could have been because he was so deep into the duel, but this felt like the toughest Spell Card so far. But much to Reimu's chagrin, he refused to yield. His stubbornness was top-notch, being both the best and worst quality about him.

And yet again, he prevailed against the odds and broke through the moon's barrier. He taunted Reimu with a smirk but she remained sternly unamused as she surrounded herself in Hell's barrier.

She rapidly launched rings of crystal blue Danmaku across the room, the individual bullets rebounding back as lasers. Alex moved the moment the rings started, but...

While his brain said "Right" his body went "Left". When he wanted to go "Up" he instead went "Down". This fried the circuits in his brain for a moment or two, but then he was quickly up and running at his normal pace.

But it was still an endeavor to make sense of this warped perspective, and the lasers ran amok across his body while he fully worked it out. He thus chose to assail the shield with large waves of fire to make up for lost time.

There was one moment where he blinked, and then the perspective of the world was flipped upside-down when he opened them back up. He tirelessly kept attacking from a stationary position to avoid having his brain screwed with any longer.

It was reckless, and utterly stupid of him, but like many times in the past it worked out for him in the end as he broke through the final shield.

And from there, the Spell Card's effects came to a close. But instead of returning to that vortex they arrived back in the real Gensokyo. Alex hunched forward, panting and sweating with his vision somewhat blurred.

He glanced a bit around then smirked at the withdrawn Reimu, "What...you giving up already?"

The shrine maiden closed her eyes as Alex kept egging her on, "Come on! Draw whatever pathetic Last Word you've got so we can end this!"

"No," She replied, "I've got no more cards to play."

"...I thought you were going to beat me in six cards? I've only counted five." Alex lorded over Reimu.

"I said you'd lose in six cards. I never said they'd all be mine." Reimu said while softly shaking her head.

"What are you talking about?" Alex said with barely contained laughter, "There's no one left besides us!"

"You're wrong. There's one more. Someone who we've **all** neglected to consider when it comes to Spell Card duels..." Reimu started to raise her right hand far towards the cracking sky.

Alex thought deeply on this. Who? Who could he have forgotten? Surely not Yukari. There's no possible way she'd join in. Hecatia, perhaps? Sure she was alive, but...

"No, it doesn't make any sense. There's no one left who..." Alex paused as the whole of Gensokyo trembled, like a pulse of life was running through its veins. Light flushed out from behind the shrine like a sun that'd been split open, and Reimu raised her voice to the heavens.

"Hear me! I am your voice, your soul, your feelings given form! If you wish to fight then fight! I will be the one to make your dreams reality! I, Reimu Hakurei, the Eternal Shrine Maiden, call for your name...!"

"Is she summoning a God?! What is this...feeling around me?!" Alex tightly bit his teeth down as the realm trembled some more.

When I said I'd reveal all the secrets I had left to say, I meant it. There is one very, very important secret about the world I cherish, that no one besides me knows. Yes, not even the other Youkai Sages, which erected the barrier to seperate Gensokyo from the Outside World, know this particular truth.

There was an idea behind the creation of Gensokyo. To separate the supernatural from the mundane society, which was advancing to no longer require the support of the supernatural to sustain them. Gensokyo was to be a place where Youkau, gods and anything mysterious and enigmatic could live their lives as they wished, without ever having any fear of disappearing.

But this gave birth to some complications. Belief was the fuel that sustained these creatures. If there was not enough belief towards these creatures in Gensokyo, then they would vanish. If people believed in them enough outside Gensokyo, then they would possibly return to the Outside World and be hunted down like animals, probed and prodded for all their secrets.

So I kidnapped humans from the Outside World, and built a village in the center of Gensokyo where they could live in peace...But with one caveat. They had to offer their belief and fear to the Youkai to keep them alive, and in turn the Youkai would do little to lay a hair on the humans. Some have obeyed these laws, other have fought against them to prove their superiority.

It wasn't the most perfect plan, but I wished to maintain the ideals upheld by the first Hakurei Shrine maiden...The same ideal world that I dreamt many a times of when I was human.

But all of this isn't a secret. It is common knowledge to all who have heard of Gensokyo. Whether through living there, or through whispers in the static between our worlds.

No, the true secret is that my actions had an unintended consequence. A consequence that, in some manner of speaking, made me a mother.

Taking into consideration the fact that a dedicated belief in something makes them reality in Gensokyo...Or that a lack of belief in something in the Outside World causes them to be magically created in Gensokyo...

What does this mean for the land we Youkai and Humans alike walk upon? Is Gensokyo itself not also bound to these rules as we are? After all, information about Gensokyo, scarce though it may be, has trickled its way through the ears and minds of generation after generation beyond the barrier's creation.

Perhaps a dreamer dreams of such a land...Perhaps a silly little high-school girl with dreams of grandeur has drifted into this land on one or two occasions, and taken a picture as proof this world exists. Whatever way it manifests, the existence of Gensokyo still lingers in the Outside World to this day...

Why is this land named Gensokyo, you may have wondered time after time again...

Gensokyo roughly translates to "Land of Illusions" or "Land of Fantasy". This world started off as a dream, an illusion of the mind in a young girl's fragile heart...Then it became reality, which drove the woman to become detached in a never-ending flight of fantasy.

Yes. That's right. When I spoke of being a mother, I was not referring to a human child...Nor of a Youkai scion. The birth I refer to was merely the act of putting a spark of life via belief into a once dormant world.

So tell them all, Alex Whiter...What is this great truth upon which I am trying to relay?

"No...It couldn't be...!" Alex swung his head around, his teeth snarled in a panic as he swung his head around and watched the bright light gush out like a tidal wave across the entire barrier, mending its wounds and filling it with the mosiac glow of an aurora borealis.

The pulse of life in the world grew louder and louder, then became a heartbeat of anger that quaked the very ground he stood on. Alex spun his head at Reimu, his eyes wide, his pupils the size of pine needles.

" _This land is a living being...! Gensokyo itself...is a Youkai!"_

"That's right..." Reimu spoke, her mind unified with his, "Gensokyo has cried and quivered in sadness and fear as you've run rampant across it! It was too scared to fight back, in fear that you would kill it in retaliation!"

As her voice echoed throughout the lands, Reimu's eyes turned hollow grey, shining like a diamond as she uttered with her arms swung down, "But it shall fear no longer! It will fight to take back the beauty that you've tainted! It shall fight to avenge the friends you stripped away from it! This isn't my Last Word...This...!"

The glowing light pushed wide apart as a massive, towering Spell Card rose up over the Hakurei Shrine. Reimu then swung her right hand down towards Alex, whose body was giving in to the sheer majesty of Gensokyo's radiance given form, and declared with an echo that spoke with the voices of all Hakurei Shrine maidens who ever stepped foot on this land.

" **LAST WORD! ETERNAL GENSOKYO!"**

The card shattered in a brilliant spectacle of dazzling lights, all of which floated down around Reimu and Alex and grew to the size of people. Each of the lights were shed off these figures, revealing the bodies of every person who had lived in Gensokyo on this very day.

Even people Alex had left alive, like Komachi, Hecatia and the Fairies, were amongst the massive crowd. They were all staring at him. They all were **pissed**. But there was one notable exception...Yukari, was of course, nowhere to be found.

Alex grit his teeth and felt cold all over his skin. He locked his sight onto Reimu, who floated amongst the crowd with Marisa at her side, who quickly waved at him and pulled her right eyelid down with her tongue sticking out.

" _This is beyond any Spell Card ever made...!"_ Alex declared as his brain was fried trying to comprehend just how many people there were. They had to have numbered in the thousands! And there was no way, not a single way possible, for him to escape.

He squeezed his blade until the veins popped out of the back of his hand and screamed with his mouth salivating and his irises a furious shade of red, "YOU'RE ALL JUST DOING WHAT SHE WANTS YOU BASTARDS!"

He charged straight for Reimu post-haste and she swung her right hand down. Immediately the denizens of Gensokyo went flying, their bodies enveloped in twinkling stardust that made them shine bright like comets.

Alex took this as a personal sleight against him, an attempt to prey upon his fears, and burst into flames to ram into Reimu with the fury of an asteroid. A couple of the people rammed into his body and they alone were able to force him back ten feet in an instant.

His body felt like it was being ripped away at, the essences of who he was shedding off his back with each collision of "Danmaku" that struck him.

"Tsk...!" Alex flung his right hand back and blasted the incoming Danmaku with a cone of fire, frying them to dust.

Then Mokou and Utsuho forced aside the flames with the swing of their hands and rammed into Alex's body, their great heat manifesting the effigy of a three-legged Phoenix.

He got right back up as they vanished and endured the pummeling of a dozen more obstacles before taking the charge to Reimu once more. This time his neck was bludgeoned with the blade of Komachi's scythe in combination with Youmu's blade attacking from the back.

He felt like his head had been decapitated and even briefly saw it rolling on the floor. He gasped for air and burst into flames, blowing up dozens of the Danmaku that charged at him.

He made a few feet of progress before Meiling came swinging her leg up at his head. He ducked under it only to find himself face-to-face with Kasen, who pounded the back of his skull into the bottom of the gatekeeper's leg. Then Suika and Yuugi dove in and smashed him to the ground with a single combined punch.

Alex wasn't bleeding, far from it, but his innards may as well been puree from how much was coming at him at once. He dug his heels into the ground and thrust both his hands out with flames large enough to swallow the mighty oaks bursting forth.

"I WON'T LET HER WIN, YOU HEAR ME?!" He screamed against the pervading light that sought to see him fall.

Before he clapped his hands together all the followers of Taoism and Buddhism banded together and dogpiled on his arms to hold him back, giving Miko and Byakuren the opportunity to drive their legs into his chest and make him wheeze for air.

The flames broke free from his body and he hobbled to his knees, grasping the pit of his stomach. He forced himself back up and rapidly pummeled at the air around him to fend off the Danmaku as he crawled along the ground towards Reimu.

Remilia and Flandre teamed up and delivered a heartwrenching claw strike down his chest, felling his offense and causing him to be dragged back by the Danmaku that followed after.

He drilled his feet into the ground and burst forward towards Reimu, who steeled her gaze with an iron fervor as he smashed his way through Danmaku after Danmaku to get to her. But when he was inches from her face he was bound around the stomach by a familiar five-pointed star.

Sanae winked at Reimu and Marisa from behind Alex and held her gohei tight while Yorihime, Toyohime and Eirin worked together to create a giant arrow from the energies of all their Lunarian comrades and fire it upon Alex's chest.

When it punctured him metaphysically it may as well been his death call. But after slamming and bouncing against the pavement until he was at the gate of the shrine he dug his fingernails into the dirt between the cracks and went charging forth, his chin but a few feet off the ground.

He ripped off large chunks of the floor and flung them into the crowd before they could get their chance to attack. Thinning the crowd left him confident in being able to strike Reimu in a single burst of speed.

But he was wrong. Oh so very wrong. The tengu flocked to his location like a swarm of crows and attacked from all sides before he could blink. This kept him suspended in place for Ran to roll through his body, with Chen following close behind.

When he opened his eyes he saw Mamizou and Hecatia staring at him from a few feet away, their backs to one another. Mamizou took her pipe from her mouth and shook her head, and Alex felt ready to snivel and cry as he bitterly bit his lower lip and watched the two strike him in tandem.

Upon the residing guilt fading away, Alex kept flying at Reimu with all he had. This time Kokoro stood valiantly between her and him, wielding her naginata behind her back and glaring at him with one angry, veiny eye. In conjunction with Tenshi the two slash away at him with their weapons, ripping large chunks of his essence from his body while the Danmaku continued to pile on him from all corners.

Alex slammed his fists down by his hips and let out a earth-shattering scream and flames forced his opposition aside. Worn and battered but not beaten, Alex buckled his fists and flung himself at Reimu, who was merely a few feet away.

Marisa kicked her broom into overdrive and rammed into Alex at full speed, slamming him up against the gate before tipping her hat off and disappearing, leaving him to be assaulted relentlessly by the remainder of the Danmaku. Everyone got their licks in, even the normal humans who had no idea why they were seeking vengeance.

When they were all said and done, Alex limped off the shrine gate and hovered a few inches forward towards Reimu, who floated alone before the shrine. He raised his right hand up, but upon blinking she was right in front of him with her hand planted against his chest.

"Its over now..." She said, radiating with white heat.

Alex felt strange for a moment as Reimu drifted away from him. He swung his hand out, but found that it passed right through her body. It wasn't like before, when his blade failed to hit. Instead of him passing through her, she was passing through HIM.

He silently stared at his hands and noticed that they looked fuzzier than before, then looked up at Reimu as she raised her chin and scoffed at him.

"I have flown you out of reality. In this state, you will be able to witness the world around you, but you will never again be able to interact with it. You will not die, but you will never kill again either. Enjoy this rotten fate for all eternity, Phoenix of Destruction..."

Alex widened his mouth and screamed but no sound came out. His eyes bulged, his skin reddened, and he lashed his hands out towards Reimu as she closed her eyes and drifted off into the ether forever. He continued to yell at nothing as the world around him turned to red...

...You tried so hard Reimu. And let no one say otherwise. But there is one thing you could not have stopped, even with all the power Gensokyo had to offer you.

Upon using your Fantasy Heaven on the Phoenix of Destruction, his Gaia Temporis had nowhere to go but down. Down onto the ground it fell and then bounced. And again, my ears became plagued by its irritating, meddlesome sounds...

" _Tick tock...tick tock...tick tock..."_

When they were all said and done, Alex limped off the shrine gate and hovered a few inches forward towards Reimu, who floated alone before the shrine. But the world was monochrome, because time had stopped...

"...W-What's going on...?" He wondered aloud, his voice an echo in the timeless void.

" _You...have to attack her the moment time resumes..."_ A frail, feminine voice whispered into his ears.

Alex's right eye twitched shut as a severe migraine shot through his brain. He, for the briefest of moments, recalled what it was like to not have a voice, or to be able to feel or touch anything...All because of Reimu.

He narrowed his eyes and the glow in his irises darkened as time resumed. Reimu appeared before him with her hand on his chest...

And Alex summoned his blade, impaling her through the chest in the mere millisecond of vulnerability she displayed by dropping her Fantasy Heaven to touch him.

She cobbled atop his blade with her chest bleeding out profusely with a fine white mist, muttering aloud in a weak, raspy voice, "H-How could you..."

Alex leaned his head in close to Reimu's face and whispered in her ear, "I will come back...As many times as it takes...Until Yukari pays. **This** is my justice, Reimu Hakurei...Die upon its blade."

He ripped the sword free from Reimu's ghastly form and she drifted back into the ether, disintegrating with a wobbly look in her eyes until not even the tiniest atoms remained.

Alex fell silently upon the ground and dropped the tip of his blade down to his feet. The light surrounding Gensokyo faded and the cracks returned in the barrier, stronger than before. He stood there and stared at the ground, feeling the immense tremors grow within the now vacant world...

Until a slow, lonesome clap, drew his attention towards the shrine. He raised his head up, anger on full display in his ravenous eyes as he saw none other than me, Yukari Yakumo, sitting daintly atop one of my gaps with my hands pressed gently before my chest.

"Well done...You survived to the very end after all." I said with a honeyed smile.

He dragged his sword along the ground like a warrior crawling back home from a weary battle. Yet his eyes still roared with vigor, and disdain that burrowed into my flesh and sinew as he stopped ten feet from where I floated.

He snarled his teeth and was quaking all over. I wondered how he could still have the strength to stand, a question I really should not be repeating to myself at this point...

"Yukari...! Yakumo...!" He growled at me, only for my hand to rise up and quell his rage just a tiny bit.

"Ah ah ah~" I teased with a smile as I leaned back into the burrow of my gap and planted my hands in a bridge under my chin, "I'm sure you'd love to tear into me once more with all your might...But why don't we save this for next time? Give it about...three days tops?"

Of course he was bewildered by my statement. But **you** aren't, are you?

...Ta-ta for now.

 _Next Time: The Connecting Thread_


	19. Final Chapter?

_...So I was a day off my estimates. Writing is hard, you know?_

 _So, this is the end. Well, one of a couple ends to be precise. I am sorry to have been so vague in regards to things as of late. I write this not just for my benefit, but for yours as the reader as well. Thin though your numbers may be, your patience in this regard shall soon be rewarded._

 _You deserve that much for having to endure what has happened._

 _But...did you ever figure out my final truth? I'd rather assume not. The only one besides me who did was Hecatia. But...there was nothing she could do even with that knowledge at her disposal besides sit back and watch events play out the way I intended._

 _Reimu...everyone. Regardless of what I am about to say, it doesn't change what has happened. I thank you all for trying your hardest to fight, and I shall remember these events forever. But I shall not mourn them, because..._

…

 _...Tee-hee. No, not yet~_

 _First off, why don't we see what our little Phoenix of Destruction has to say to me?_

Outside the thrall of the narrative, Alex Whiter has only been standing alone in wait for a few meager seconds, his eyes dazzled with confusion while the rest of his face looked worn down and tired. He's been through a lot these past twenty-four hours, perhaps more than any "mortal" man should have been allowed to endure.

He didn't waste a single second after reviving from the death inflicted upon him by the one he loved...To come to Gensokyo and exact his revenge upon me. He wanted to deliver "justice" upon the wicked, but wound up killing everyone who stood in his path.

He's been beaten, battered, torn apart, and yet stitched back up anew time after time after time again. He's but a puppet...A puppet of flesh, sinew and blood, but a puppet nonetheless. So please...Dance little puppet, dance for me a waltz of rage and despair. Scream at me your words of venom until your lungs are ripped apart like a popped balloon. Enjoy your last moments, for **you** robbed yourself of your joy.

Alex raised his head and took the weight of the dying world upon his shoulders as he leaned his neck out, the veins popping out slightly from under his chin as he strained to bark the vitriolic words from his mouth.

"You...bitch!" A simple start, unsurpising to be sure. He followed up this rancid snarl by raising his voice and digging his feet into the ground, as though attempting in vain to intimidate me.

"How dare you...How dare you show your face now!" He swung his right arm back towards the fires and famine that swept Gensokyo, his smile twisted up to the right as he let out one, unhinged chuckle.

"Everyone! Everything! Its all GONE! I did it...I ruined all of Gensokyo!" He squeezed his fist and teeth together and stared me down with eyes almost black as coal, his anger somehow only growing stronger.

"...They fought for you. They fled...for YOU! They died...FOR YOU!" Alex pounded his fist up against his beating heart and squeezed his fingertips against the palm until it started bleeding.

"Do you know how many people died because of you?! Because of ME?!" And from there he started listing off all the names in agonizing detail, adding emphasis to each and every one for no other reason than to think it'd incite me to anger.

"Shikieiki! Reisen! Kaguya, Mokou, Eirin! Miko! Unzan! Ichirin! Murasa! Nue! Kyouko! Shou! Nazrin! Futo, Tojiko! Byakuren! Aya, Hatate, Momiji! Rin! Satori, Koishi, Utsuho! Nitori! Sanae, Kanako, Suwa-"

"What is the point of-"

"LET! ME! FINISH! You...BITCH!" He yelled through snarling teeth, and so for this moment I seceded to his rage, but wore a flowery smile as I leaned in closer to listen.

"...Yuugi, Kasen, Suika! Yuyuko, your best friend! Ran, your loyal servant! Chen, Youmu! Meiling, Koakuma, Alice, Patchouli, Sakuya, Remilia and Flandre! Tenshi! Kokoro! Marisa! REIMU! AND THAT'S JUST THE PEOPLE WHOSE NAMES I CAN REMEMBER!"

He started tearing up. What a pitiful, blatant facade of emotion...

He swung his bleeding fist up towards my face, as though offering me a portion of his "bleeding" heart as he cried out, "All those people died hoping that I'd be stopped...Or that you'd face up to your duties! But instead they place all their faith in a _**coward**_!"

I closed my eyes and let out a somewhat trite sigh before responding back, "Yes, but at least I have the strength in me to admit that I am one. What do _**you**_ have to say for yourself on that front, o'Phoenix of Destruction?"

He started trembling before me and swung his fist back down to his hip as he stammered, "T-This isn't about me damn it!"

"Could it be about anyone else BUT you? You've been the main focus of this entire tale from the very beginning. Yes. Its always been about you...Poor, pitiful Alex Whiter...The orphaned, traumatized little boy given great power and beloved by everyone he comes across."

"Shut...UP!" He yelled back, but for me...That was simply the perfect signal to keep going.

"But pity fails you now. After what you've done, no one watching on the outside deserves to give you even an ounce of sympathy ever again."

"What...I've...done?!" His eyes widened, for he was blatantly horrified by the callousness my words seemed to suggest I was expressing, "After all that bullshit you spewed about 'loving' Gensokyo you couldn't even have the decency to try and protect it! **I** accept my role in all this! Its time you did as well!"

He lashed a pointer finger at my face and I felt a slight breeze kick my hair back. Was this really the best he could muster at this point? I shouldn't be surprised, honestly, but even I am starting to feel a little sorry for how weak he feels before me now.

"...I did try my best to protect Gensokyo. I sought to break you, dissuade you from ever believing you had a chance to stop me...And then in a cruel twist of fate, turn the one you love against you," I close my eyes and shake my head a little, "But alas, you came back to life anyways. And spurned on by the vengeance in your heart, you came back to finish the job..."

"So it was you...You're the one that tricked Shina into attacking me." His voice was insipid, lacking in surprise.

But he did put me in a bit of a tight spot. I do not wish to lie, but I cannot divulge my comrade's existence to him now can I? A little wordplay ought to serve me well here...

"I tricked your mind into believing she was an enemy. To my lack of surprise, her love for you was so strong that her voice reached out to you through the illusion and helped you break it at the last moment."

"...Why?" He growled, "Why do you keep targeting her too?! She didn't do anything to you!"

"Because," I spoke most quietly, "She was the only thing keeping you in check."

"Yes. It wasn't out of any sense of spitefulness towards the girl. I am actually quite fond of her, truth be told...But as long as she was around, you'd continue to be well..."

"Fuck you...!" Thankfully for me, he interrupted me before I'd have to strain myself to try and divert the subject naturally.

He lashed out, unsurprisingly, in anger, "You're a deceitful, spiteful witch! Do you think I'll ever believe your lies?!"

"Believe what you will. But there is one thing even you cannot hide from yourself..." I sat up atop my gap and stared down at him with a playful allure surrounding my body as I smiled and whispered, "Countless times I've watched Gensokyo be burned to the ground. But this is the first time that **you** have stood amidst the ashes and embers."

"...What are you talking about?" He growled in confusion.

Luckily, I am quite the enlightener on these sorts of things, "I mean that you, the real you, not your 'split-personality', is standing before me."

He narrowed his eyes and growled with a trembling body, but did not utter a word as I continued on, "But of course that doesn't make any sense to you. Even with everything I've told you thus far, there is no way you could have known this."

"Did you never consider how odd it was...That your 'split-personality disorder' didn't behave in the way that it should have? Instead of you shifting between two different personalities, that second one only seemed to be a voice in your head? That is because the 'Author' used your trauma as a catalyst to create his second 'Blank' inside of your mind...The TRUE Phoenix of Destruction."

"Oh yes," I say as the boy's jaw drooped somewhat in silence, "I am not lying. You see, it was the 'Author's' intent to hide this 'split-personality' from the general audience, and then when the time came to destroy Gensokyo he'd force the Phoenix of Destruction out and try to spin the event as you being possessed. That way he could get EXACTLY what he wanted out of his insane narrative and leave you 'blameless' for the act."

"But that's not what happened in my series of events now is it? Like I said before, when a 'Blank' is separated from the 'Author' for long periods of time, they start developing their own sense of self. Now your 'split-personality' became its own entity altogether, and decided that it wanted to destroy to satisfy YOU...And on top of that, I exposed the secret of this 'split-personality' to the world."

"But I couldn't just let the Phoenix of Destruction be. So that is why I enticed the artifact piece into your hands on Mega Man's world...So its cursed nature would draw your 'split-personality' into control of your body, and in time Shina Aurora would damage it so thoroughly that it'd be forced into slumber."

"And from there, the rest of my plan would unfold as you know it...Since you'd been separated from the control of the 'Author', your 'split-personality' wouldn't be able to accomplish the task it was created for, and for good measure, your death would finally avenge the countless timelines where I watched Gensokyo fall to ruins."

"...But things didn't go according to that plan. That meddlesome stone of yours rewound your clock and brought you back to life...And then well...You know what happened. After all..." I stared down with empty eyes, " _ **You**_ _caused all this._ "

He started to hang his head and avert his gaze from my own as I spoke, "It appears that, 'Author' or not, you are a natural born destroyer of worlds, Alex Whiter. And now...you can no longer hide behind any excuses. YOU chose to do this. Not me. Not some 'Author' tapping away at his keyboard. YOU, and only YOU, can say you have blood on your hands."

"...So what?" He said with a surprisingly minor degree of laughter following up on that, "Yeah...I did it...I ADMIT IT!"

He swings his arms up for a moment and then let them limp back down to his hips as he declared, "I destroyed Gensokyo! **I** AM the Phoenix of Destruction..."

He bit his teeth into a scowl aimed my way and growled out, "But none of this changes the here and now Yukari Yakumo! You can keep pinning the blame on me all you want...But after all you expressed about loving Gensokyo you can't even bring yourself to grieve and mourn it!"

I laid back into my gap and gently laid my hands under my chin. With a sultry gaze and mischievous smile I uttered quietly to the boy, "Now why would I mourn for the demise of a _**fake**_ Gensokyo?"

And upon saying those very words his body stiffened up like a statue and his rage turned towards fear and denial. He started shaking his head with a haughty grin and barked back at me, "Don't try and weasel out of this you bitch! Gensokyo is-"

"Safe and sound back where I left it, with no awareness of your return." I said with my eyes closed and my smile feeling quite lovely, if I must be honest.

I didn't even have to see it. It was so easy to visualize the boy's pupils shrinking and his body retreating a couple steps on its own. He must have been shaking his head around, taking one long look at the world around him. I know what he was attempting to do, but...

"Its a perfect recreation, isn't it? Even down to the tiniest leaf, this duplicate served its purpose splendidly," I opened my eyes and my smile grew wider. Eventually, it is going to run out of space to grow, so I dialed it back a bit and muttered, "Now I know what you're thinking...Yes, this trickery is far beyond even my capabilities."

"But...Hecatia warned you, didn't she? That I have friends in _'higher-up'_ places." With the grin of a Cheshire Cat I watched the boy's will to fight collapse like a jenga tower.

"There were certain rules I had to obey in making myself one of the Four Guardians. Unless you instigated a fight, I could not directly touch you, so I manipulated events from the shadows to give you every reason to want to fight me when we meet. Likewise, the wish I made could not be used to put an end to you, even if it was within their power to do so. You have Sarajin to thank for that bit of protection."

"So that left me with a tough decision to make regarding my wish. I wondered...How could I stop you, and ensure Gensokyo's safety on the off-chance my Plan A failed to work? I thought about it long and hard for a couple centuries before finally deciding on it..."

"I would wish for a second Gensokyo to be created. A mimic that duplicates everything that happened in the real Gensokyo down to the letter, but not vice versa. And in my wish I included that I would be the master of this duplicate, given full control to do whatever it is I wished. I could plant more trees, I could add more people...I could destroy it, or I could rebuild it. Anything I want was within my power to do so."

"So with a second Gensokyo under my control, I informed the people of the real Gensokyo about the real and immediate threat you posed. Just enough paranoia to ensure they'd fight you when the time was right, but not enough to ruin the structure of Gensokyo itself. After our first encounter, I supplanted the fake Gensokyo over the real Gensokyo, so that when you'd return you'd fall right into my trap."

"...From the very beginning...This Gensokyo...Was a fake?" Alex couldn't believe a word I said, but yes...

"Ever since you returned. Everyone you killed and tormented with your presence, from the Lunarians all the way to Reimu, were all duplicates born of a wish I made upon the 'higher-ups'."

"Y-You're lying...!" That spark of life returned to his voice and ignited a tearful rage as he swung at me, fists flung at the empty air, "Everyone I saw...Everyone that died! They fought with all their heart! Those were the real deals damn it! Don't fuck with me!"

"That just goes how little our almighty overseer refuses to slack when it comes to craftsmanship. Futanji Shinryu didn't just create all these worlds we live in...He also wears those very worlds as his scales. Each and every individual world, and each and every one of those trillions upon trillions of individuals that live upon them beat as one in his heart...When he creates, copies or destroys, he does not allow even the slightest imperfection to escape his notice."

I smiled Alex's way as he pulled back his fists and continued to cry. It was rather insulting at this point to see him weep, so I remarked in a rather forceful manner, "That's curious. Why would you even want me to lie in the first place? Wouldn't it be better if this world was a complete and utter fake? A dream whipped up by an insane woman? Then... _you'd be able to live with yourself guilt-free._ "

I pulled a fan out from behind my left sleeve and whip it before my face, hiding my dainty smile while peering down with glaring violet eyes, "This world being a duplicate doesn't change a thing. Just because I have preserved the real deal doesn't invalidate your behavior or your actions."

"You came into this world with the intent to kill, and kill you did. You had the power within you to incapacitate any who stood in your path. But instead you killed. You killed and killed and killed some more until finally there was no one left but you and I. And for what? 'Justice'? Its true what they say...Justice is blind...Blinded by a blood-soaked curtain of red."

"You could have avoided this. You had the perfect out...All you had to do is return to the one you love. The 'Author's' control over you was broken, your 'split-personality' was laid dormant...But you chose 'justice' and 'revenge' over 'love' and 'restraint' because behind all the masks that's the person you truly are, Alex Whiter."

"I never engage in a fight I know I cannot win. And now...you **lose**. Plan B has almost gone off without a hitch."

"...You're wrong." He tightened both his hands around the handle of his blade and raised it up high before his chest, the amber sheen swallowed up in engorging flames.

"I'm still here...You're still alive! I'll destroy you and your lies once and for all Yukari Yakumo!" The flames raged but were whimpering in comparison to the inferno I saw him raise in the past.

I folded my fan up, closed both my eyes, and with the fan pointed down at his body I remarked, "I said you lose, you but that's not quite true in a manner of speaking...The full truth is that you **lost** 3,081 words ago."

Alex Whiter dispelled his sword and dropped to his knees. His eyes became blank and unblinking as his upper body slumped back and stared towards the sky. All this, he did as **I** have written it to be, and without any cause for resistance.

"...Full supplanting achieved. As of now, for as brief a time as I am allowed, I am in full control of your actions, Alex Whiter." A slapped my fan against my left wrist for a moment then tucked it into the adjacent sleeve, descending upon the boy as he just stared into oblivion against his will.

I hopped out of the gap and kneeled down in front of him. Drawing one hand up to the side of his face I caressed down his cheek and giggled like a little girl receiving a doll for the first time, "Your 'Author' really did craft you well. A pity the personality leaves much to be desired..."

I turned my head to the left to look at you all and giggle some more, "Yes. I'm certain you're all very, very confused right now. But I assure you, this will make sense in a moment. But...I do require a little help in that department."

Thus I reached into the boy's right pocket and draw the Gaia Temporis out, enclosing it in a tiny spherical barrier as I leave it hovering between my palms. I stare deep into its "eyes" and with a wide smirk remarked, "Hello little miss troublemaker. How are you doing?"

" _...What have you done, Yukari Yakumo?"_ A bitter young woman speaks to me in return.

"Oh come now don't be vague. Tell them what they wish to hear..."

" _...W-Why have you brought this duplicate Gensokyo one million years into the past? To THIS location?!"_

"Ohohoho. Why, you ask? Isn't it obvious dear Temporis? ...Cause you left me no other choice, of course." With a lighthearted smile I stood up on my feet and propped the stone between my chest and the boy's head, looking beyond it to gaze at my new little plaything.

"Beyond keeping the number of Phoenix of Destructions at one, I worked to the tooth and nail to keep the probability of these events at 100% because I knew YOU just simply couldn't let **him** go. Whenever you ferried Alex Whiter's soul to another body, you were also working to preserve **his** soul, the pure and original soul that you knew..."

" _..."_

"You're a powerful nuisance, but even you aren't without a rulebook to follow. Without a perfectly perpendicular timeline to jump to, you're stuck rewinding the clock to keep them both alive. But...in this current state of affairs, you can only rewind, you cannot jump forward. After all, time travel of this extent is strictly forbidden. Even I am risking a lot to do what I am about to do."

" _..."_

"Without words to say are we? Then let me keep going. The way I see it, as long as you are around it is impossible to kill Alex Whiter for good. But 'Reimu' had the right idea, she just didn't go about it the right way...If killing is off the table, then imprisoning him in a situation he cannot escape from is the right way to go about that."

" _...That's why you let things unfold that way in the BlazBlue world."_

"Yes. That's right. That too was a test. The Boundary would have been an effective prison to hold the Phoenix of Destruction back...Were it not for the fact that it was still bound by the laws of time and space, allowing you the chance to work your mischief to save them both."

"But there IS one prison that isn't upheld by these troublesome laws. The 'higher-ups' prison...The Eternal Ravine."

" _..."_

I smiled at the Gaia Temporis as finally, at my command, the fake Gensokyo started to unravel around me, "That's right, Ms. Temporis. You know what it requires to be put in that prison. A catastrophe so grand that it would draw even the 'higher-ups' attention..."

"History dictated already that the 'higher-ups' obliterated one troublesome world. A world filled to the brim with 'Authors' and hundreds upon hundreds of 'Blanks'. But instead of them being responsible, I shall rewrite history ever so slightly, and put the Phoenix of Destruction in the spotlight of this world's end. And as the 'higher-ups' shall be watching, they will react upon this world's end almost immediately after it unfolds."

"Under my command as the boy's temporary 'Author', he shall raze this world to the ground and be set to trial for his actions. I am assured in myself that he shall be rendered a 'Guilty' verdict and imprisoned for all eternity for this crime, while I shall return to my real Gensokyo without a problem."

"And you, you meddlesome stone...Shall pay penance for troubling me so by following my every wish."

" _Why would I ever do that? Why would I ever help you?!"_

"What other choice do you have? You can attempt to run, but then you'd be breaking the law. You could attempt to hide, but I shall always have my eye on you...Or you could accept the punishment I wish upon the Phoenix of Destruction, and remain at **his** side for all eternity...Just as you always wanted."

" _..."_

" _..."_

"...That's a good girl," I undo the barrier around the stone and place it back into Alex's pocket, giving it a couple pats before standing upright and drawing my parasol behind my head, "Now then..."

The "barrier" behind the shrine parted, and the bright blue and green light of the Earth basked upon my body. But this was not **my** Earth...

Alex got up, because that is my wish, and drew his sword in his right hand while growling like a rabid beast.

"Shall we go? A world of heroes and villains of all shapes and sizes awaits us. As does your final fate, Phoenix of Destruction..."

I wish there was some other way, some other sacrifice I could make. But like the boy, I have chosen my path forward and shall not look back. So forgive me, true believers...For it is your world of Marvels that shall be the sacrifice to ensure the end of the Phoenix of Destruction.

With one rather forced smile, I slipped back into the open depths of space and crawled into a gap, my lengthy blonde hair entangling my body as Alex Whiter pursued me out of the collapsing replica of my beloved world with his fires raging out like that of an immortal Phoenix.

And this...is where the threads of fate between the one who Destroys and the one who brings Balance, at last intersect.

...But its a fickle thread. For soon, the story of the Destroyer shall meet its end...

 **Final Chapter: The Fall of Alex Whiter**

…

…

…

...

 _Next Time: Trial of the Phoenix of Destruction_


	20. Extra Stage Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

The following two chapters will contain spoilers for certain series. I do not wish to name them directly here in lieu of giving away which characters shall be involved in these events, but by the time you see their names the series they're from WILL be listed beside them, so if you do not wish to be spoiled further then you are welcome to leave.

My apologies ahead of time.

* * *

" _Who...are you?"_

" _Stop! Stop in the name of the – ghhkk!"_

" _We're facing a threat the likes of which we've never seen..."_

" _He is not of this world...Nor of this time..."_

" _How can we stop someone who can absorb our world's natural resources?"_

" _MARY JANE! You...You'll pay for this!"_

" _Yes...Yessss...We are much alike..."_

" _Let us cause...Such great Carnage together!"_

" _Today we are not just Heroes, or Mutants or Inhumans...Today we stand and fight a common threat...AS AVENGERS!"_

" _AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!"_

" _Stephen have you got him? ...Stephen?"_

" _Foul creature from the outer worlds...I know naught from whence fires you drew first breath from...But now you face the wrath of the Odinson! The God of Thunder!"_

" _And the World Breaker...The Green Scar!"_

" _He's destroying everything..."_

" _Its...Its not...his doing...there is...a-another..."_

" _Lord Odin...I fear to tell you that Midgard is lost..."_

" _And my son?"_

" _...Perished in the destroyer's flames. And the destroyer...is on his way here..."_

" _...Seal the Bifrost and gather all of Asgard, nay, all the remaining Realms together! In the name of Odin, son of Bor, we shall meet this destroyer with his destruction!"_

" _Lord Thanos...It appears as though the Nine Realms have been...destroyed."_

" _ **Run."**_

" _The Kree, Skrulls, Shi'ar...All of them walk a march of Death."_

" _Make your stand here and now alongside me, Gladiator of Shi'ar! If we fail, then it is the end of all worlds!"_

" _Gamora! Drax! GROOT! No...No damn it...! YOU SUNUVABITCH...I'LL KILL YOU!"_

" _This energy...Why can't I absorb it?!"_

" _We're losing...Is there truly nothing that can stop this monster? ...God help us all..."_

" _Entity from another world...You stand in judgment of the Living Tribunal!"_

" _ **AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"**_

A wretched, womanly wail jolted Alex awake from a nightmarish slumber. He gasped and his head lurched forward, a cold sweat plopping to the ground, mixed with the blood that ran down the eaves of his head. The sweat and blood was foggy and lasted seconds upon the ground before vanishing down to the last atom.

The beady, bloody dew disappeared into mist atop an empty, white floor as bright as the dawn of day, and as peerless as a mirror. The sound of its dripping echoed, echoed, echoed...

Was there no end to this echo that haunted him so? He raised his head to check and was greeted with much the same sight as he had seen before. Had he even moved at all? His body felt so numb he couldn't tell.

As vertigo took hold over his mind Alex tried to stand, only to find immense constraint stopping even the movement of his fingers.

"Why...?" He barely had the strength to gasp, even his lips felt numb. He could not turn his head back to see what bound him, but there was nothing to see to begin with. Much as he sat upon nothingness, so too was he bound by nothingness. And if something is made of nothing, then that means there is no strength nor weakness to it. It simply...is.

He had been forced to his knees and his arms tied to his back. There was no feeling in his elbows, nor in his lower legs. Even if he could muster the strength to stand he'd collapse back down on the spot. So it was with great pain and anger that Alex tried to understand how he got into this mess.

His right eye squirmed shut as he strained the memories forth from deep in his brain. First the nightmares fell. Heroes wearing red and blue. Warriors that wielded hammers to call forth a mighty storm. Gods and mutant. Aliens and ghouls...All of them falling to flames. A tear fell from his eyes as he watched these events unfold cleanly enough that denial of their reality was impossible to do.

"No, these are just...Nightmares...! I was just..." He vividly recalled the sight of Yukari, who postured her superiority over him in a dying 'Gensokyo'.

And like the blood in his body did his rage doth boil over, as he screamed into the empty void, "Where are you Yukari?!"

" _ **He has awakened at last. Let us begin with the proceedings..."**_ A voice devoured his echo like a storm would a forest. No, to call it a voice would be a disservice to its grandeur. Those words were the echoes of the many cosmos given form. As those echoes reached his ears Alex's head rose on its own, drawn by the lively breath whose breeze spanned hundreds of worlds long...

There were three shadows descending from higher up. Two had a human's shape, but the third wiggled to-and-forth between them like a snake. But they were truly much, MUCH bigger than that...

As that shadow wormed its way closer Alex was able to see clearly the appearances of the other two.

The one on the left was an elderly man wearing a silvered wizard's robe that went down to his feet and was covered in black five-pointed stars. His eyes appeared unnaturally large and somewhat cartoonish, but he could stare down with an unflinching gaze and their appearance did not detract from the wisdom his age displayed. He had a long, pointed beard that went to his knees and looked as smooth as silk, while his hairs remained down from the back of his otherwise bald scalp.

Alex was confused...Though there were some differences, this man was undoubtedly...

 _ **The Grand Sorcerer of Light: Yen Sid (Kingdom Hearts)**_

The person on the right was a woman that was surely no older than her late-teens. She wore a black dress that was longer in the back with a heart-shaped plunging neckline. She wore black bridal gloves that went to her elbows, and a widower's veil to cover her violet-eyed face. Inside the skirt of her dress was a purple, starry expanse that resembled a universe, while the edges of said shirt shedded off feathers as she made her descent. She wore thigh-high socks that followed a grey diamond pattern. The breadth of her wings was stretched out like strands of ivory, and long, pointed feathers dangled from the bottom. Both wings were topped by cloths of velvet. Finally upon her chest laid a golden locket shaped like a seed, and though Alex could not see it, inside the locket was a tiny, tiny Earth that she caressed fondly in her right hand.

Despite this woman's many distinctive features, it was her long, silky, ebony hair that truly connected the dots for Alex...And brought with them more questions than it did answers, for this woman was...

 _ **The Devil Witch who Embodies Lust: Homura Akemi (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)**_

" _Why...How...?"_ He wanted to belay to those two as they plummeted to the center of his vision atop thinly veiled platforms of reflected light. But the pressure of the last arrival of the three sank those words to the pit of his stomach like a stone.

The serpentine shadow belonged to a dragon of unimaginable size. The majestic creature perched its head between the mile long gap of the other two, but only comparitively speaking. For in truth he was still miles upon miles away, the tip of his tail unseen by even the eyes of gods. He had a rugged jaw and snout with a somewhat rectangular shape. The tips of his nostrils were firm and pointed like mountains stretching over a sunlit horizon, while a two-pronged mustache draped past the sides of his face, weaved together by glittering, milky strands of cosmic gases. The scales upon his face were the color of dawn, not a coincidence, but merely a function of his multi-chromatic skin.

Meanwhile the scales descending down his back told a different story. Each of the ones of millions of worlds he breathed life into through fire and brimstone at the universe's beginning were reflected in those scales. Some shone other bright, others were dull, yet they all supported the weight of his boundless love that spanned his body like a wavy, rainbow colored mist. He had no arms. No legs. He didn't even appear to have a mouth, nor horns...But one look into his eyes, whose irises were as gruesome and frightening as a red giant's, and whose pupils swallowed everything into them like a black hole, and one would understand all there was to know about him.

He was just as magnificent and terrifying as Yukari had described him...

 _ **The Living Will of All Things Fantasy, the Arbiter of Universes, and the Embodiment of Dreams: Futanji Shinryu (?)**_

...And it was upon that moment that Alex fully understand the gravity of his predicament. He was before the "higher-ups", the cosmic judicators that have governed the universe since the fall of many worlds to the encroaching Realm of Darkness...

Yen Sid, with his saintly guise and deep, empowering voice, slowly drew his right hand out towards Alex and remarked, "I now summon forth the Four Guardians to aid us in this hour of judgment!"

The whole realm trembled and shook as four irovy pillars of light rose up from a couple miles apart from Alex in each of the four directions. He gazed up at the top of the northern pillar, where I, Yukari Yakumo, sat upon one of my gaps with a dazzling, playful smile and my parasol propped over my left shoulder.

As he growled and snarled his teeth, I nudged my head towards the pillar east of him. I wanted him to see, at least, who else has taken up a position of power as a Four Guardian before the real show began at last...

So look he did. Standing atop the pillar was a tan skinned man who looked to be in his early twenties. He had short silver hair and yellow eyes that gazed with an allure of mystery. He wore a long-sleeved purple jacket with a furred collar and a faded white shirt underneath, with three golden buttons to keep it together. His jeans were purple as well, albeit a lighter shade. Half of them were covered up by his faded white boots, whose material continued to run up the back of his legs until reaching his waist. Finally around his neck was a single, golden key. He was a curious being to be certain. One whose actions shall prove very interesting on this day...

 **The Purveyor of All Things Past, Present and Future: Alvis (Xenoblade Chronicles)**

Then I nudged to the Western pillar, and he turned that way on the dime. Don't worry, I'm not controlling him anymore. That'd just be overkill at this point. What he saw on that pillar was...a small, square hot dog stand. Dainty little thing really. Doesn't even have a grill or mustard bottles. But what it did have was a skeleton. A short, pudgy skeleton with a dimpled smile, large eye sockets, and perfectly aligned teeth. He wore an unzipped blue hoodie, a white t-shirt, black shorts with white stripes, and a pair of sneakers. And right now he was snoring away with the front of his stand perching his head. But, I suppose I would expect nothing less of this one, the one they call...

 **sans (undertale)**

As for the southern pillar, well...

"Where is Hades?" Homura commented in a soft, sultry voice as she gazed narrowly upon the empty pillar, "Is he neglecting his duties again?"

" _ **It is with great sadness that I must report his demise to you all..."**_ Futanji whispered, his eyes creasing shut from the left and right.

"Killed?" Alvis remarked with a smooth, dulcet tone as he turned towards the mighty dragon and inquired, "By whom, pray tell?"

" _ **The hero from his world, an angel by the name of Pit...And the Phoenix of Balance, Riku."**_

...Well now, that's interesting news to me. I try my best to hide my surprise by smiling, but that Alvis takes a glimpse at me and starts to hum to himself. Perhaps your gaze would be better served elsewhere. After all...

" _ **Mourn on your own if you feel it necessary. We do not have time to find a replacement. We shall proceed as six..."**_ Futanji lowered his head down and I could feel him breathing down my neck as he remarked, _**"Yukari, please wake Sans up."**_

"As you wish," I gave him a respectful courteous nod and then extended my right hand out into a gap, another opening beside the skeleton's face as I glided a feather up and down it, "Tickle tickle~"

His head began to rise and so I withdrew my hand and giggled. He looked around a bit and spoke up in a laid back manner, "oh, we're starting already?"

"I do believe that is the case, my skeletal friend," Alvis spoke up before looking up at the mighty dragon once more and inquiring in a jovial manner, "Or am I getting ahead of myself, Futanji?"

" _ **No,"**_ Futanji responded firmly before narrowly pushing the weight of his gaze straight onto Alex, whose fear left him shivering and mute, and exclaimed in a bellowing echo, _**"Let the trial commence!"**_

 **EX Stage Chapter 1: The Trial of Alex Whiter**

"T-Trial...?" Alex bit his quivering teeth as the dragon once more overpowered him with the severity of his words.

" _ **Alex Whiter, the Phoenix of Destruction...You stand accused of the annihilation of Earth 616, the Marvel Universe, and all who inhabit or were attached to it. You have also violated the laws of time-space...How do you plead?"**_

Alex's heart sank to the pit of his stomach and his skin became flushed of color. He swung his head out as best he could and cried out, "D-Destruction of...?! Th-there has to be some mistake! I-"

" _ **YOU WERE NOT ASKED TO QUESTION. YOU WERE ASKED TO ANSWER. NOW I ASK AGAIN, HOW DO YOU PLEAD?!"**_ The screams of the divine dragon nearly ruptured one of my ear drums. But the joy of watching the boy squirm and slump over made all that pain worth it.

"N-Not guilty..." He whimpered before raising his head and declared, "But-!"

" _ **Then we shall proceed. As us three who preside over the proceedings are the only witnesses to the event in question, we shall elaborate henceforth on any questions the rest of you may have..."**_

"yeah, about that...what's a Marvel?" Sans said with a shrug of the shoulders.

Yen Sid opened his eyes and turned to the skeleton, unveiling what he knew in as punctual a manner as he deemed necessary, "A world of superpowered individuals, locked forever in a battle between the light and the darkness, their hearts sweating oaths of valor and justice...Or corruption and malice. In our day and age, the lasting proof of their existences resides within comic books scattered amongst the Earths in the four corners of our universe."

"wow. sounds like something Papyrus would've enjoyed. maybe i'll pick up one of those comics for him on the way back."

" _ **Ahem..."**_ Futanji sighed, and from there Alvis directed the spotlight onto himself. He rubbed his chin softly and appeared deep in thought.

"As I recall correctly, that world housed a number of 'Blanks'," With a subtle, cheeky smile he turned towards the skeleton and remarked, "Though I don't suppose you'd require a lesson on those, would you now Sans?"

Sans went still and silent, and so Yen Sid filled the void of silence with his words of wisdom, "After the incident with the Beyonders, the Incursion of Worlds, and the Battleworld born from the egotism of Victor Von Doom...We were to strike down that world before their corruption could spread to other realms."

"But alas," Homura remarked with a wicked, humorous chuckle, "It seemed you were all beaten to the punch."

Yen Sid closed his eyes and began a deep, thought-provoking hum whilst I took over for the others, "Yes. Through time and space the Phoenix of Destruction burned through the cosmos and landed upon the Marvel Earth. He thoroughly wiped out their greatest heroes and villains and obliterated the planet without mercy. Then he proceeded to Asgard and annihilated the Nine Realms, before finally drawing the attention of all the alien races and cosmic entities that lied beyond...And slaughtering **them** as well."

Spoken with a tender smile, of course the boy wouldn't fail to notice my rather descriptive detailing of the story. He stared up at me with blank eyes, and not long after did his scowl grow, and his anger rose to the surface to surpass his fear.

"That _would_ appear to be how the tale unfolded..." Alvis remarked, before looking straight down at the boy and enticing him with his honeyed words, "Does this sound about right, Alex Whiter?"

"LIAR!" He lunged his head out and screamed at me, "IT WAS YOU! YOU MADE ME KILL THEM! YOU WANT YOUR CRIMINAL...ITS HER! YUKARI YAKUMO IS-"

Before I could even blink Alex's mouth was wiped from existence, bringing a smile to my face that I had a hard time restraining. Alvis closed his eyes and appeared to murmur to himself devoid of any outside interference. Futanji stared down at the court as the boy struggled to try and break free, and then dulled his strength with but his whisper.

" _ **Your only hope of escape is to be found innocent of these crimes. Struggling is futile. Not even you, Phoenix of Destruction, can break those restraints,"**_ Alex proceeded to limp over and start crying, as Futanji continued to worsen the sorrow in his heart, _**"But if you are found guilty...Eternal imprisonment is your just reward."**_

Alex shut his eyes and his head leaned down to his chest. What else _could_ he do, but look so pitiful and defeated?

" _ **Now that that matter has been settled...Are there anymore questions? Or shall we proceed to the next step?"**_

"None at the moment." Alvis commented while slipping his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

"I am good." I say with a smile.

"same" Sans added on.

" _ **Then, shall we render our judgment?"**_

Oh. Please do. I can't stop my heart from racing with anticipation. After a few brief seconds of silence the "higher-ups" started things off.

" _ **Guilty"**_

"Guilty"

Futanji and Homura said with firmness and scorn respectively, the gaze in the witch's eyes turning most pale at the revolting sight of the boy's bloodied body.

"...Not Guilty..."

Unsurprising to me, Yen Sid spoke in favor of the boy. He always does this, but there's some satisfaction knowing he does so this time with great hesitation. As the dragon let out his wistful sigh and slowly shook his head, he murmured to the rest of us, _**"And what of you, my 'Four' Guardians?"**_

"Guilty." I spoke not a second after.

"...hmm..." Sans was spending a bit of time more than I expected peering down at the boy with that glowing blue eye of his.

While Alvis, he gestured his right hand up by his shoulder and remarked, "My verdict was predestined from the start. But I won't say what it is _quite_ yet."

"I don't think it matters if you do or not," I said with a smile towards the man as I leaned my elbows against the rim of my gap and laid on my stomach, "With three Guilty verdicts, his fate is all but sealed."

"...Is it now?" He smiled back at me. Always a troublemaker that one. Even after all these years working with him as one of the Four Guardians I haven't been able to decipher the kind of actions he'll take.

Alvis looked on over at Sans and remarked, "Is something the matter, my skeletal friend? You seem to be coming down with quite the 'bone-chilling' flu."

"heh. good one." Sans responded with a wink of sorts before shaking his head around and remarking, "kids got a lotta EXP. i mean...a lotta, lotta EXP."

He stared down at the boy with that blue eye of his and remarked, "guess you 'LOVE' killing, huh?"

If it was meant to come across as a joke, then I'm probably the only one laughing at it. Sans then closed his eyes and remark, "hmm...his soul's telling one story...but his face's telling me another. he's looking pale as a ghost."

"No doubt a result of all the lives he's taken." I remarked while twirling my parasol around.

"wouldn't know. i've been pale all my life," Sans said with a shrug of his hands up, "oh and...I guess I've never killed either?"

I peered at the skeleton with my eyes alit with serenity underneath the shadow of my parasol as I said to him, "Fufufu, indeed you haven't. But if you keep these jokes up, I'll be your first victim."

"aww, you're too kind."

" _ **I may not look like it...But I am a very busy dragon. Save the idle chit-chat for after the trial is over you two."**_

Though Futanji spoke quietly, I knew he was a second away from losing his patience and promptly apologized, as did Sans by saying, "sure thing big guy" in a somewhat jovial tone.

He then tucked his hands into his pockets and shrugged his shoulders, "guess i should give my verdict..."

"Before you do..." Alvis interrupted, "May I bother you with a question?"

Futanji understandably glared down at him, and so the man made an addendum to his question, "This relates to the trial at hand, rest assured."

The dragon drew his eyes closed and gave the approving nod. Now...whatever do you have planned, Alvis?

"Sans...Correct me if I'm wrong, but one of your powers is to quantify the karmic levels in a person's soul, yes?"

"uhhh...yeah?" The skeleton doled out a gentle shrug.

"...Does your eye make the distinction between whether the karma is gained willingly, or not?" His head budged slightly toward me, his gaze more forthright in the intent behind his movements.

I narrow my gaze his way as Sans answers without hesitation, "Nope."

"I see..." Alvis' smile began to creep along the sides of his face, drawing Homura's attention towards him with a modest amount of disdain.

"What is the purpose of this line of questioning, Alvis?" She inquired, her cold eyes unable to pentrate the statuesque pose the man adopted.

"Have none of us considered the possibility that Alex Whiter had been...controlled into committing this most horrendous of acts?"

His head shifted more towards me. I knew you'd be trouble this time...But not even **you** can possibly know the full truth of what has been done, Alvis. So with a dulcet smile I gaze upon him and remark, "Mind control...It is certainly a possibility. But who, pray tell, would want the Phoenix of Destruction to behave in such an unexplainable manner?"

"...That, I do not know..." He softly turned his head back and lowered his hand to his hip. Once more, your intentions elude me...

I gently closed my eyes and shake my head, "Then it was pointless to bring to our attention Alvis."

"Was it now? I wonder..." The man drew his eyes towards Sans once more and remarked, "Surely, **you** have something to say on this matter, my skeletal friend."

"hmmm...maybe? wouldn't have been **this** loveable skeleton who ran into a similar problem though..." He looked up at Futanji and said, "that's how you said it worked...right?"

" _ **Correct. But that is not relevant to this case. Alvis..."**_ The dragon swerved his head to the man and remarked, _**"Unless you can prove there is relevancy in what you are saying, then your vote shall be rendered null and void."**_

"Forgive me Futanji. I did not mean to cause a disturbance," He bowed his head slightly and then looked to Sans once more, "But I do have one more question. And this is one for you all...Was the boy's behavior upon hearing the destruction of Marvel not...curious, to say the least?"

He started to turn his head to me and remarked with a tiny smile, "He accused **you** of being the murderer."

My hands slipped and I ended up gripping my parasol tightly while my lips furrowed into a frown. Futanji intervened, as I expected he would, with a firm affirmation of my "alibi", _**"Yukari Yakumo was nowhere to be seen near the site of the event, Alvis."**_

"Nowhere in sight...But I wouldn't say that'd disqualify her from manipulating events from the shadows."

"The same could be said for many others. Even you, Alvis." I threw back at him with my head raised high and a smile meant to hide the irritation I felt towards this man.

"Indeed. It could be entirely possible the boy mistook another for you. He **does** have the knowledge of many of our worlds, after all," That dull pause of his was just a breather before he continued to stand on the boy's side, "But were his words not a heartfelt plea of innocence?"

Homura's body exuded a chill worse than a winter's night and drew Alvis attention away from me and unto her. She drew her hands before her chest and stared down at a white light aglow like the sun as she said to him, "The guilty do not truly express remorse for what they've done."

She summoned a battered white stuffed animal with a rabbit's ears, dotted red eyes, and a long busy tail and wrapped her arms slowly around its chest, "They weave a web of lies under a guise of righteousness, and deflect all wrongdoings under others..."

She squeezed the stuffed animal until its head popped off like a balloon, then drew her arms out as the rest of the body burned away to snow white ash. Then all she had to say after with her solemn, bitter tongue, was "No matter **who** they hurt in the process..."

Her violet gaze pierced through Alvis' body and even sent a chill down **my** spine. With a shaky grin she drew her arms out into the air and began to twirl on one foot, the ashes dancing around her body as she explained, "And as Sans said...The Phoenix of Destruction's karma cannot be questioned. Blood is blood, and ashes are ashes..."

"Then that brings me to my final question. How many of us can truly say they know what kind of person Alex Whiter is?"

Alvis' question brought all in this void to silence. Though I may wish to raise my hand, I feel as though I'd be walking into a trap. Yet, I'd also feel the same way if I don't...

...How long have I waited for this moment? How **long** have I had to watch Gensokyo burn over and over in my head? And yet, so close to victory, why does it feel like I can still lose?

Alvis raised his hands out by his hips and commented, "All of us know of him, yes...Others may have observed him bits at a time. But knowing a name, knowing a face...And knowing the person attached to them, are two completely different things."

He stared down at Alex, who only watched on with a blank, lifeless expression as he was judged for his crimes. Yet in a moment of hope, Alvis stretched his hand down towards the boy, whose spark of life returned just long enough to turn his head to look at the mysterious man.

"That is not the say the boy is without fault. In fact, I daresay none of us in this very room can claim to be faultless."

Yen Sid slowly nodded his head and murmured, "Indeed..."

The others merely fiddled around and hummed to themselves. Except for me. I simply locked my eyes onto Alvis and remarked, "So you claim the boy must be judged not for his actions, but for the kind of person he is?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes." Alvis twisted his head back a bit and smiled at me, showing a little mischievousness behind that usually stoic facade.

"...Whether in actions or in behavior, destruction is all he is. It is quite firmly a part of his name, no matter how much you deny it Alvis."

"Then perhaps we require some testimony from another party. One who could provide quite the enlightening perspective into the true character of Alex Whiter."

" _ **A witness at this juncture? You speak the impossible. As I said, all who have bore witness to this catastrophe are present..."**_

"You are more right than you realize, Futanji. All who witnessed the event ARE present...Including the one I wish to call to the stand."

…

"And who, pray tell, is your mysterious 'savior', Alvis?" I inquired with punctuated annoyance towards his inability to get to the point.

"Why, sans Sans," The skeleton couldn't help but chuckle at that, "We all know this man. Though his soul may slumber now, his 'eyes' would still be awake."

"Ah. So you wish to awaken **him** ," Yen Sid spoke up, a glimmer of intrigue appearing in those crusty old eyes of his as he began to rub down his beard, "But he sleeps a deep sleep. A call to attention alone would not suffice to awaken him."

...Alvis, you conniving little minx.

As he creaked his head back slightly to smile at me he remarked, "But it would not be beyond the power of one such as you, would it, Futanji?"

" _ **Indeed it would not. But you realize that what you ask of me, can only be answered if given in the form of a wish, correct?"**_

"And throughout all the years we've known each other, I have yet to use said wish," He thrust two fingers up towards me and remarked, "And now I shall...! To bring this trial to its conclusion, the soul of Sarajin Stratos, the previous Elemental Overlord, shall be awakened from his slumber. And from his testimony, may the true nature of Alex Whiter be deduced!"

 _Next Time: The Fate of Fire_


	21. Extra Stage Chapter 2

**EX Stage Chapter 2: The Face of Destruction**

...I've been going along with his absurd little game for long enough. But now that Alvis is truly making a mockery not just of me, but of the rest of the court as well, I can remain silent no longer.

"I object to Alvis' request," I said while raising my hand up past the rim of my parasol, "It is blatantly clear that he is trying to bring in a biased source to testify in favor of the accused."

" _ **Hmmm..."**_ The murmurs of the divine dragon brought Alvis to stop smiling for the moment, _**"Yukari raises a point. Sarajin would rule in favor of the boy's good nature, no doubt..."**_

"Indeed he would," Alvis remarked while slowly lowering his head and closing his eyes, "But if I may be so forward, Futanji, could I state the intention of my wish before you decline it?"

"Why should you keep getting away with holding up these proceedings?" I pondered aloud, raising my voice in an accusative manner, "Using your wish during a trial? That's unprecedented beyond all imagination. At this point you might as well just say 'I wish for the Phoenix of Destruction to be declared innocent'."

"I would not make a mockery of the court in such a manner. I am merely...trying to make a point," He flashed his subtle smile at me and remarked, "Unless, you know more about the Phoenix of Destruction's character than you are letting on, Yukari Yakumo."

"...He visited my world for a little bit but I never met him in person. He's as a complete stranger to me as he is to you," I raise my head and giggle a little, "So I don't understand why you're so adamant about trying to prove his innocence, Alvis."

"All in due time Yukari," He siad while tucking his hands into his pockets, "But you are right. I have held things up long enough."

He turned his head towards Futanji and remarked, "My wish is simple...I wish for Sarajin Stratos to be awakened from slumber, and during this trial he will be completely and fully honest regarding what he feels regarding Alex Whiter."

"...That way, there should be no fear of bias," He tilted his head back towards me and grinned from the side of his face, "Is that acceptable?"

'What he feels regarding Alex Whiter', you say? With those terms and conditions, there would be no way for Sarajin to expose my part in all this...But that almost feels like its being done on purpose. You **do** know I was involved Alvis. You and your precognition. But that power is worthless against the words I think, and the words I write in this state of being. You may think you are winning this 'fight', but you've chosen the wrong wish. And I look forward to seeing your plan unravel.

" _ **Very well...I accept the terms of this wish. Now..."**_ Sarajin thrust his eyes up and a rush of pure energy flowed outward across the realm, sweeping us over like a spring breeze, _**"I release you from the shackles of slumber, Sarajin Stratos!"**_

A pensive glow surrounded Alex's body as a bright, holy sphere of light was forced out of his body, making him feel weaker for just a few scarce moments. The sphere released the sound of an droll yawn that echoed slightly off the pillars we Guardians stood upon.

"...Where...am I?" The voice spoke like an elder sage. Slow, yet wise. Yet as the mass of light budged slightly upward it let out a more high-pitched sounding gasp and spoke up with a far more youthful voice, "You...you guys?!"

" _ **It has been two-thousand years, Sarajin. I presume you've enjoyed your sleep?"**_ The mighty dragon indulged in a little bit of joking around as he addressed the mighty Elemental Overlord with some degree of respect.

"Futanji..." Sarajin tried to return to his older sounding tone, but his voice cracked a bit and he quickly gave up, "I...I see you're looking quite well these days."

Alex was no doubt confused by the Elemental Overlord's change in tone. The man he once thought was wise and revered now sounded like some everyday goofball. Considering his current predicament, even I could not blame him for closing his eyes and throwing his head down in defeat.

The spirit of the Overlord turned back upon sensing his vessel's distress and then the sheer girth of his glare could be felt upon us through his sifting form as he addressed in a deeper tone, "What is the meaning of this? Why is Alex Whiter here?"

"Your 'successor' stands accused of a terrible, unrepentable crime, Sarajin," Homura remarked with the mere glow of her eyes fighting back against his pressure, "And should he be found guilty, your soul shall serve an eternity of imprisonment as well."

"...What crime could be so great to warrant this trial, Futanji?" Sarajin said with a complete disregard to the witch's threats, "Our agreement was-"

" _ **That we would not interfere in the affairs of your successors, yes. But I am afraid this is a matter too grave to ignore, for as you shall now be told, your 'Phoenix of Destruction' is responsible for the swift, abominable end of the Marvel Universe."**_

"...What?" Sarajin's devastation was palpable, and a little delicious to take in as I watched him retract his spiritual form towards Alex and appear to stare at him with slight confusion.

Alex raised and rapidly shook his head, and for a moment I heard Sarajin whisper to him, "It'll be alright..."

He then turned back and I quickly intercepted his attempts at pleading by remarking with a somewhat mocking tongue, "Did you not know this?"

I twisted my head back at Alvis and remarked, "So much for 'a spirit seeing as it sleeps', no?"

Of course, **I** knew what was going on. Alvis, you were a fool to think I was not aware of what a spirit can and cannot do. I silenced Sarajin's sight with my boundaries during all moments where I was involved, from the start of my encounter with the Phoenix of Destruction, all the way to now. If you believed you could expose me through this wish, then you are sorely mistaken.

...But, I suppose that little could stop you from smiling anyways.

"No, I knew nothing about this. I watched Alex's journey over the last couple of years, but there was a point where darkness consumed my vision," Sarajin looked towards Futanji and remarked, "But...why was I summoned?"

Alvis, with a bow of courtesy towards the dragon, answered the question thusly, "I used my wish to awaken you, venerable Overlord, to answer one question for all of us."

"Alvis? Hey man, how's it going?" Sarajin spoke cheerfully like a someone who hasn't met his friend for a long time.

"Quite well, I am happy to report. But...now is not the time for catching up." He started to rub his chin and Sarajin's spirit jolted a little in response.

"Right right, I get it...Somewhat. So go ahead, ask away!"

"Tell us the truth. What kind of person IS Alex Whiter?" Yen Sid inquired in a firm tone of voice.

"What kind of person is Alex Whiter?" Sarajin murmured aloud to himself as he slowly drifted his spiritual form around to stare the downtrodden boy in the face.

"...He was not the person I was expecting, that's for sure."

Sarajin turned back around and his gaze could be felt gliding along the entire court as he spoke, "When I first met Alex Whiter, I didn't see some hero ready to accept his grand destiny. I saw a child, frightened and wounded by the world into believing that there was no good to be found within it."

"I saw a fire in his heart that wished to see this terrible world burn. I almost didn't want to let him have my powers. But...I could not deny that he had made it all this way to me. He had made friends, forged bonds eternal, and with their help claimed the stones I had laid out across the Mushroom Kingdom and brought them to me."

"So I sought to take him under my wing, and help him realize his potential to do good even in a world that seemed to conspire against him. And he did do good. He fought back the boy who took up the mantle of Dark King. He defeated the emissary from Subspace. He bested his dark clone created by the machinations of Cackletta..."

"But when that victory was achieved, the boy's doubts began to turn against him, and he hid himself from the world he had saved three times over. It was at that moment that I was reminded that he was not someone I could just force my wishes upon. I was a fool to think so. But rather, he was someone who needed help...Help I knew naught how to provide."

"He ran from his friends and his duties for a couple years out of fear that the hate he felt would make him burn everything down. But then...he met her, the girl who held the last name of my beloeved. And in those first few seconds of meeting her, she helped him more than I had in the years inhabiting his body."

"Having a positive influence around, one more around his age, gave Alex Whiter second thoughts about the world. He started believing in the good of the world again, and tried to be a better person not just for her sake, but his own as well. As for what happened not too long ago...I am lost on the details."

"But you ask me what kind of person Alex Whiter is? Then this is my answer...He is anti-social. He is rude, abrasive to most people he meets. He cares little for his own safety, and is quick to rage..."

"...But his sense of justice is second-to-none. He feels sympathy towards the less fortunate, he is more than willing to act as a shield to protect the innocent, and he won't hesitate to save those he cares for the most. Does this make him a great hero? Absolutely not. But even if Alex Whiter was not the one I wanted, I would never ask for a do-over. For as flawed as he is, I know deep in my heart that he'll do more good for this world than he would evil."

Sarajin finally stared up at Futanji with a gaze that, somehow, managed to meet the mighty dragon on an even playing field as he spoke, "So do I believe that he destroyed the Marvel Universe on his own? Its always possible. But you'd find me hard pressed to believe that he'd ever do so willingly."

Futanji closed his eyes and growled, _**"Thank you for your cooperation, Sarajin."**_

"Heh, I mean...did I really have a choice in the manner?" Sarajin snarked with a slight nudged towards Alvis, who quietly chuckled to himself.

...It was certainly an interesting farce you whipped up for us Sarajin. But no matter. Even if Sans is convinced by this tripe, the vote'll stand 3 to 3. And in the event of a tie...Futanji is the one who makes the final verdict.

"hmm, so what you're saying is...he's a good guy underneath all that gruff?" Sans asked of Sarajin.

"Hey, I was asked to tell the truth, so I told the truth. What you do with its your business skeleton guy."

"heh, alright. if you insist..." Sans appeared to close his eyes and think deeply about his decision for the few seconds they remained shut. When he popped them back open, he looked down at Alex and stated simply, "just don't go around killin' anymore and we're square, ok kid?"

With a subtle wink and nod the skeleton then remarked, "oh right...not guilty!"

...And of course, Alvis would then draw his hand out to the court and remark, "And seeing as how my verdict is the same, I believe that puts us at a tie."

" _ **Very well. Then the final decision lies on my shoulders..."**_ Futanji closed his eyes, and my heart started racing against my chest in anticipation. I nearly snapped the handle of my parasol in two holding onto it as tightly as it did. The dragon debated with himself for more than a minute, the longest I had ever seen him do so, before finally opening his eyes and delivering his divine edict upon us all.

" _ **Alex Whiter, there cannot be any doubt that it was with your hands the Marvel Universe met its end."**_

Say it. Say it and put a definitive end to this farce!

" _ **...But as for the strings that guided those hands to commit this most heinous of crimes...That I am not certain of now. Perhaps it was of your own volition, perhaps not. But after the heartfelt words Sarajin gave in your defense, I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt...For now."**_

...No.

" _ **But rest assured. If we catch you being involved in an event of this magnitude again, we shall not waste even a second with these proceedings."**_

...No. No no NO!

" _ **Now. In the name of the almighty God, I release you from your restraints..."**_

...Those chains of nothingness disappear from Alex's body and he stands up slowly, a free man. And the moment his mouth returns, he stared at me with a scowl and started tightening his fists, only for Sarajin's spirit to fly in front of his face and whisper, "You have earned your freedom. Please, do not do something you'll regret."

His scowl grew tighter and tighter until it twisted his whole face up. He was as angry as I was disappointed at this whole outcome. His body let out a swift burst of fire as he threw his fists down and turned away, where Futanji opened up a rift to outer space with but a thought and remarked, _**"You are free to go."**_

Alex limped over to the rift and drew a bead on me with his rage-filled eyes. I could feel the powerlessness weighing on his mind as he didn't speak a word otherwise to neither me nor the rest of us gathered here.

How frustrating it must have felt to him to be able to walk away free from a situation he never deserved to be in, with the one responsible getting away seemingly scot-free. He came after me seeking revenge, and now he walks away with nothing but confusion and the burden of failure.

With his body trembling with a scowl, he took one more step out of the rift, and it sealed up in an instant. And with his part in the trial now over with, Futanji remarked _**"The rest of you are dismissed..."**_ and slithered backwards into the expanse of nothingness that housed him. Yen Sid and Homura looked at each other for a moment and then disappeared as well, doing whatever tickled their fancy.

But as for me...With my head hung low and my glare a mix of sorrow and frustration, I turned towards Alvis as he stood smiling atop his pillar, and asked him one poignant question, "Whose side are you on?"

The man tucked his hands into his pockets and gave me a daft shrug as he responded, "The side of possibility, of course..."

I closed my eyes and chuckled, forcing a smile as I twirled my parasol above me, "You knew from the very start what was happening. No, rather, it'd be more appropriate to say you knew for many years, didn't you?"

"Indeed," He remarked, having warped from his pillar to mine, and putting his back up against me as he leaned his head up and spoke, "But even if I had not, there were some moves you made that were a little...Reckless."

"Obviously, you are not referring to during the trial. Its hard to debate with someone who knows what you're about to say a dozen steps ahead of time."

"If I recall correctly, you were the one who suggested Sans to be one of the Four Guardians. That was just one of the slip ups you made."

"And what of Hades' demise? How _convenient_ for your cause that he so happened to perish right before this trial began."

"Hahaha...Yes well, if you're accusing me of taking part in his untimely death, then you are sorely mistaken I'm afraid. Its just as you say it...Its unfortunate happenstance, and little more."

"...Hmph, so you claim."

"Unfortunate though his death may have been, it was only because of that that I was able to do what I did. After all, had he been alive he'd have most certainly voted 'Guilty', and there would have I been nothing I could do to convince him otherwise."

"I couldn't fully trust Hades to behave that way. You know what kind of troublemaker he was."

"Which is why Sans became a necessary back-up for you. But you underestimated how much hatred for the guilty was in our little skeletal friend's soul."

"Underestimated him? No. What I underestimated was how much of a fool you are Alvis."

"Oh?" He gave me a hearty chuckle, "Perhaps I have grown a little...foolish. **They** must have rubbed off on me."

"You know exactly what the Phoenix of Destruction is. You KNOW that he cannot be allowed to run free, even with the Author's hold over him broken."

"...Perhaps not," Alvis waved his right hand out and remarked softly, "But as a brave young man once told me...'The future should be decided by each and every person'...Why should Alex Whiter be excluded, just because he was born from different circumstances as the rest of us?"

"So you are interested in the possibilities that he can create moving forward..."

"You are...partially right. But I also wish for you to live to see the future he creates with his own two hands."

"Hahaha...I get it now. The only reason I was spared from being ratted out is because I'm to take part in your little 'experiment'."

"I'd prefer you not use that word. It brings up...bad memories."

"Then how about I use the words 'You are a fool' instead? Because that is what you are...a fool."

"You broke the boy free from the shackles of his Author...Yet let your desire for revenge get the better of you and wished to burden him with an eternity of solitude and imprisonment. If I am a fool, then you are one of a higher calibur than I..."

"...You'll speak a different tongue when its your world that's consumed in fire, just as the rest of the worlds shall burn in the wake of his wrath. You have opened Pandora's Box. There is no closing it."

"Then I am to take it that the great Yukari Yakumo is nowhere close to being done meddling? Plan A and Plan B have failed you...so now its time for Plan C?"

"This defeat was another setback, but you are wrong on two accounts. One, I need not meddle any longer...And two," I turned my head back and gleamed at Alvis with a taunting smile, "It is Plan **J** , not C, that is next."

"Ah, I see now...Those letters do not denote an order, but rather abbreviations...A for 'Annihilation', B for 'Banishment' and J...Refers to **him**."

"That's right. _He_ is another who bears a terrible grudge against the Phoenix of Destruction."

"You are playing with fire. It'd be in your best interests not to get burned."

"...We'll see about that. After all, **he** is your superior when it comes to precognition. You will not be able to weasel the Phoenix of Destruction out of danger this time, Monado."

"...Heh," I could see his smile sticking out from the corner of his face as he tucked his hands into his pockets and remarked, "Then tell Justek Arcavira...that an old friend said 'hello'. I presume that wouldn't be too much of a burden for you now would it...Maribel Hearn?"

"...I'll see what I can do." With an uneasy smile, I slip into one of my gaps, while Alvis' flesh and blood body transforms into a tiny glowing green star that flies out of the realm.

…

Sans's gaze shifts around, and upon finding out he's all alone he shrugs his hands up and said, "huh...guess i'm gonna have to walk back."

Moments after Alex and Sarajin's spirit left the realm of the 'higher-ups' behind and floated amidst the unknown depths of space, the once Elemental Overlord remarked in a deep, relieved voice, "...I can't believe I was able to get out of that mess. Futanji can be a tough customer sometimes."

The spirit turned around and saw Alex hanging his head and scowling his teeth together. He drifted on over and remarked, "What's wrong Alex?"

"...You lied to me." He growled as he swung his head up with the fury of a thousand exploding suns in his eyes.

"You...LIED TO ME!" He screamed at the top of his lungs, silencing Sarajin's voice as the boy thrust his left arm out and planted the other firmly on his chest, "I was never the one you wanted was I?! You knew from the very beginning that it was **JOE DARK** who was meant to succeed you, and you had the nerve...the NERVE to lie to my face and tell me that I was the chosen one!"

"...Like I said back there, just because you weren't who I foresaw coming doesn't change that you were as worthy as he was." Sarajin tried to remain calm, but there was this sense of guilt in his words.

Alex squeezed the front of his shirt tight and started to tear up as he yelled, his voice coming across as broken and incoherent, "What difference does that make?! You still knew a ton of other shit and hid it from me this whole time!"

"There's an entire race of Aurians out there who survived your time, and your WIFE is one of them! I fought her for crying out loud! When were you ever gonna clarify that, huh?! Or what about the 'higher-ups'?! You sure as hell were acting all buddy-buddy with Alvis! I bet you knew who Yukari was the whole time too!"

Alex reached into his right pocket and rammed the Gaia Temporis right into Sarajin's spiritual form, "And what about this piece of shit!? Mind explaining why there's a sentient life form in here?!"

"...T-There...There is?" Sarajin's muddled confusion was genuine, but not like Alex was in the proper mood to believe him as he whipped the stone back down to his hip and exclaimed, "Don't play **stupid** with me! After all the bullshit I've put up with today, I don't DESERVE your crap on top of the shitpile you left me!"

He bit his lower lip and with his eyes trembling he mumbled, "I-I didn't want a mentor...I just wanted a friend goddamn it! And you couldn't even have the decency to tell me your real name! I had to find it out from Yukari! YUKARI GODDAMN IT!"

"...I'm sorry. This was just another of my many, many mistakes..." Sarajin appeared to hang his head and look away in shame, but Alex still wasn't having it.

"I don't _want_ your apology...I want **answers**." Alex forced the Gaia Temporis into his pocket and squeezed his fist around it.

"I never wanted you to have the same life I did. I did much good as the Elemental Overlord with the 'higher-ups' help...But I did an equally unpleasant number of things as well. When I willingly gave up my life, my soul, to pass on my powers to a new generations, I did so with the caveat that my successor would given full freedom to decide what they wished to do with said powers...Without their interference."

"That's why I hid so much from you. The further you remained disconnected from my past, the better off you would be. You deserved the shape your own future...But I would try and remain at your side as best I could."

"...A whole fat lot of good that did..." Alex turned around and swung his hands up, "If there's one thing I learned form all this...You can _never_ run from your past, cause just like death, its always faster than you'll ever hope to be."

He cracked a grin and dryly chuckled, "Except for me...Can't even have the dignity to die, can I?"

He squeezed his fist up before his chest and started shaking his head, "I thought power was the key to all my problems...I thought love was the key to all my problems...But look where that got me."

"All the power in the world wouldn't have saved me just now. I stared in 'God's' face and realized how insignificant I truly was. I wasn't allowed to defend myself...I was just a pawn in Yukari's game, forced to watch as people I didn't know personally debated over whether I was worthy of keeping my freedom."

"...They were going to rob me of my freedom, and I...hahaha...I..." He planted his fist against the side of his head and pulled his fingers apart, tightly biting into the skin with his fingernails as he raised his voice, "I would have had no choice but to let them! How...how fucked up IS that?!"

"Alex..." Sarajin tried to draw him back with an easing whisper, but the boy's voice just grew louder.

"What?! You gonna try and tell me there's something good to gain from all this?! The Marvel Universe is DEAD...Yukari orchestrated its destruction and used me as a goddamn PUPPET, and what does she get? She gets to go home and rest on her fucking laurels UN- **PUNISHED**. Meanwhile, what do _**I**_ get?"

"NOTHING!" He swung his arms out and flung his head back, his eyes red and wide as he cackled at the top of his lungs, "A big, fat load of NOTHING! Once again, Alex Whiter gets... _nothing_."

"...You're alive. That's more than a lot of people can say." Sarajin tried to put a positive spin on things, but again to no avail.

"...Oh yeah? And what am I supposed to do with this life?" He slowly rolled his fingertips into his palm and twisted his head back, his face looking a little _too_ calm for Sarajin's comfort.

"...Keep fighting the good fight? When at any moment those bastard 'higher-ups' can wipe out this timeline? Go back to Shina? When I don't even know where the hell she is or if she's even still alive? ...And even if I did find her, how could I possibly face her now...?"

He turned his whole body around and slowly drew a finger up at Sarajin's soul, his body falling pale and limp like a doll being broken at the seams, "Instead of spewing all this optimistic crap at me...You should tell me how to kill Yukari Yakumo for good."

"...Have you learned nothing from this? Revenge is what brought you to this point. If you keep going-"

"Then let me at least have to decency to drag that witch to hell with me!" Alex screamed, spit flying forth from the eaves of his teeth before he bit them down into a scowl, "Goddamn it you bastard tell me! Tell me how to kill her!"

"...There is one person who might able to handle Yukari Yakumo. Someone I knew long ago, who as of now should still remain locked away in a prison for his crimes."

"And...?"

"...His name is Justek Arcavira. He is a man with the power to manipulate voids within the fabric of time-space, including the likes of Yukari's gaps. But..."

"But...But **what**?" Alex firmly glared down the soul of the Overlord with a growling scowl.

"...I worry the years might not have been kind to him. If you free him, there is reasonable doubt that he would be willing to aid you. In fact, his return may endanger the universe if he is not app-"

"Then I give up!" Alex plainly stated while throwing his arms up and wearing a forced smile.

"...What?" Sarajin was left confused as Alex twirled back around and stared up into space.

"There's nothing left for me in this miserable, rotten world...Why was I born? Just to suffer? To be everyone's puppet? If that's the case then to hell with this world!"

"Alex, stop. Do NOT give up on the world!" Sarajin's voice shook space as he flew his spirit back into Alex's body. There, in the depths of Alex's soul, he saw him standing amongst a growing sea of dark red flames.

"...I'm not just giving up on the world..." Alex's voice had no emotion, it was as empty as the air surrounding him.

He turned around, his eyes robbed of even the light in his pupils as he murmured, "I'm giving up on _everything_ , even myself..."

The realm started to quake and Sarajin looked up. Towering over the two, their footsteps worsening the flames into a raging inferno, was a shadowy colossus that took up Alex's shape and had nasty red irises.

"No...Don't do this Alex..." Sarajin's pleas towards the boy's good will fell on deaf ears, as Alex was quickly bound up in a cage of flame, and the titan drew its hand down and scooped the soul of the original Elemental Overlord into its grizzly palm, raising it before its face.

" _You're welcome to trick some other dumbass with your schlock. But_ _ **we**_ _...have better things to do."_ The ill titan's mouth widened and ate the Elemental Overlord's soul whole with a single, bellowing gulp.

Then with a satisfying sigh, the titan shrunk down until it was the size of his other, and through the bars of fire he coiled his arms around Alex's neck and lovingly embraced him as one as he whispered in his ear, _"...See? Doesn't it feel good to finally let go and be free?"_

Alex slowly nodded his head, and the shadow behind him wove a wicked smile between its cheeks as it hissed into his ear, _"Yes...We_ _ **are**_ _finally in agreement, aren't we?"_

On the outside, "Alex" leaned his head back and took in a breath of fresh air through his nostrils, letting out an equally exuberant sigh as he lowered his hands to his hips and murmured in a raspy voice, "So this is how it truly feels to be alive...We've been butting heads for a long time, but now we see clearly what must be done..."

He wrenched the Gaia Temporis from his pocket and set his hand ablaze as he dangled it before his face, piercing it with his glowing red irises, "Now...we have much to do, don't we? And this time...You **will** obey us, or we will crush you into tiny pebbles, you accursed, putrid stone..."

The voice inside the stone screamed in agony as the flames penetrated the sanctity of her cage, and the sounds, no matter how dull they echoed, brought a smile to "Alex's" face.

"...Now then. I think we should find out more about how to free this...Justek Arcavira, wouldn't you agree? There's no time to waste... _All of existence is waiting to burn, after all_."

...On that day Alex Whiter finally got his wish to die.

 _Long live, the Phoenix of Destruction._

 **CLASH OF THE ELEMENTS PART 4 EX: FALLOUT OF DESTINY...**

 **THE END...**

….

….

 _But...Whatever happened to Shina Aurora?_


	22. True Finale

Hello...Umm...My name is Shina, Shina Aurora.

I know we haven't talked much. Golly, I don't think I've ever talked to you at all 'til now! But...but I could really use an ear to listen to what I have to say. Just for a moment...please?

There's someone I want to talk about. It...probably wouldn't surprise you that its me, ya? Is that selfish? I'm sorry. Cause, I heard you don't mind that kind of talk if someone needs help. And I...I...

I just...really need some help.

See, I grew up in this big floating city, Sancturia yeah? I lived with my mother Auris, and my little sister Kairi. I know you haven't met them, probably...But my mom's a bit of a goof at times, but she's also very loving. And sis she's...Well by golly she's the sweetest little gumdrop you'd ever darn seen!

...But, I-I became afraid for them. I was so afraid _cause_ I love them that darn much. See, there's this bad guy, Gravitus? He's gonna to take my sister away and use her to obtain ultimate power.

I set out on a quest to save her and my people. But...I wasn't alone. There was this...boy. His name was Alex Whiter. At first I thought he'd be the one to save my people. But I was wrong. Boy, was **I** ever wrong.

...Cause he didn't save them. He saved me...from myself. I ain't afraid to admit I was a bit of a wreck back then. Always letting people push me around and not doing much for myself. Not that I didn't LIKE helping people, but...The demands got a bit silly, lets put it at that.

But back to Alex! See, a lotta people would say he was a bad guy. Sure, he was rough around the edges, but...It was that same roughness that chiseled away at my cage and let me spread my wings and fly. I was able to start standing up for myself, and believed that I could do more...And...and because of that...

I...Well gosh, I just wound up falling in love with him. At first it was just silly, childish admiration for the legend. But then I realized he was more than just a title. He was a person, a troubled, frightened person, but that didn't make him no different than me. Heh, he ended up falling for me too now that I think about it. Its...almost like it was destiny.

…

…

Sniff...A-And now he's dead. I...I killed him...With my own two hands I killed him! I didn't mean to do it! I-I swear, please believe me! But...but it all happened so fast and it was beyond my control that I...

...I-I'm all alone. I'm praying to you on this rock in unexplored territory for an Aurian, just miles away from where I need to be. But...I-I don't know I can make the last stretch. My legs feel so brittle, my heart is so heavy...Its like I'm carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders.

So...that's why I'm talking to you. I was kinda hoping you'd help lift some of that burden off my shoulders? Cause... **he's** no longer around to carry it with me.

G-Give me all the strength ya got! I-I can't fail now...not when I'm so close. I...I don't want to lose anyone else! I...don't want to be alone...Please...God.

 **True Finale: A Girl Named Shina Aurora**

"Sniff..."

I've been sitting on this lush, forestry planet for almost two days now. At least...I think its been that long? There ain't no sun out in these parts as far as the eye can see.

Thank goodness the atmosphere's full of something similar to aura. If it weren't then...gosh, I don't even want to think about that right now! My wounds are fully healed up, but...

My knees sure feel numb. I've only been sitting on them for what, ten minutes? Thirty minutes? ...An hour? ...Gee, has it even BEEN two days since...

…

...He always was scarily good at keeping track of time. Its the little things like that ya tend to appreciate about someone once they're gone.

…

No! Focus Shina! Ya did a prayer, so now you've gotta show God you were worth his time! So get on your feet and make that first leap forward!

"Ow...Oof! Oh my poor heels...I can barely feel my legs!" I tried standing up right away. Maaaaybe this was one time to take it slow 'n easy. So I end up wobbling around for a few moments. No big deal! I'm used to being unbalanced.

Why I remember on the sixteenth birthday when I had to suddenly get used to aaaaall this new weight on my chest...

Wait...who'm I even talking to? Its just...me. Right?

"...Brrr, feelin' really cold all of a sudden here." I cuddle my arms against my body and look up. That big, bright, blue glowing sun-like thingy's staring me back. Maybe that's the source of these chills?

This whole place is totally unexplored territory for an Aurian...Wait, didn't I say that already? Oh man, I'm going nuts all by myself, ain't I? W-Well, hey, look on the brightside! This'll practically make me a bonafide Neil Armstrong!

"One small leap for me, one giant leap for family kind!" ...Yeah, that's what he first said on the moon. Totally!

"Ok Shina, practice what ya preach and make that leap!" I swing my hands up towards that glowing sphere and raise my heels off the ground. Theeen I put them back down. Then back up. Theeeen back doooown...

"...Ok seriously Shina, get that lead outta ya boots and..." My body shoots off the planet's surface and pushes through the canopy as I truimphantly declared, "Fly! Yahoo!"

Course, just cause something looks close in space doesn't mean its a walk in the park to it, so the saying goes. It takes me more than a couple hours at least until I start feeling the immense warmth the sphere's projecting. It...kind of reminds me of a hug from mom.

I'm a little famished going forward, but that's fine. If the other planets are any indication, I'm gonna be eating liquid gold from whatever treasure trove lies behind this veil! So I press my body against the bright surface and feel myself being squeezed like a ripe orange as I penetrate my way inward.

My mind sort of drifts into a state of nirvana for a few seconds as I find my body surrounding with pure, concentrated aura. I feel like I am one with the stars. 'Course, not like I wasn't expecting this. It ain't called the "Cosmos Drive" for nothing. But woooow...This feels really, really good.

"Huh?" Its a darn shame it lasted as long as I said it did though. Before I had blinked my eyes twice I was inside the massive sphere and witnessed something truly spectacular. The inner walls of the spheres were covered in bright lights similar to the Aurora Borealis seen on Earth.

Mom always joked that the people of Earth must've named the phenomenon after her late father, but I wonder if there ain't some truth to that? The Aurora Borealis has always been connected to Sancturia even when the city was on an entirely other world...But that's a history lesson for another day.

While I so earnestly wished for this vibrant landscape to be where I needed to go, my real destination was somewhere rather...drab and dull. The core of this sphere, presumably where all this pure Aura was projecting from, was this large, dirt brown planet filled with cracks like it was ready to go "Pop!" any moment.

"Huh, this...ain't what I was expecting." Was I being silly to expect I'd be greeted by a giant golden citadel spanning millions of miles wide? I mean sure it would've been a real pain in the keister but...

A dirt planet? Really? ...Oh! Maybe the golden citadel is hidden UNDERNEATH the planet! Kinda like the Aurian equivalent of Atlantis!

"Well, what am I waiting for? Better get to exploring!" I bolted straight towards the planet, the trip taking me roughly an hour at top speed...In hindsight, I really should've activated my Valkyrie Drive to make it faster, but just thinking about it reminds me of...

…

A-Anyways! My first landing on the planet is a little rocky, but thankfully the whole thing doesn't pop under the weight of my feet. That's good, right?

Ok, so first impression of this place? Not so good. The ground looks drier than a saltine cracker and there's all these icky...I want to say skin flakes, littered on the floor. But the worst thing about those flakes is that they're...sticky. Oldy, moldy and sticky. They've been around for so, so long that they're practically fossilized.

"Uuurk, I'm ready to throw up..." I turn my head up and cover my mouth until I get far, FAR away from this disgusting sight. I run a few yards before running into a somewhat better change of scenery.

There's a few mounds of dirt filled with human-sized holes. Even someone as tall as me could easily squeeze into one if I tried. N-Not that I'm any mood to. I could only begin to imagine all the cobwebs clogging that thing up.

"Huh, I thought there'd be a few more...skeletons." Yes, I have a problem with rotten skin but loooove skeletons. Guess I'm just weird like that!

Around that point I slap the side of my head and go "Oh duh!" as I remember that there's something I need to pull out. I reach into my left pocket and pull out the round runic stone that we...managed to piece together over the last two-ish years.

This was our guide to the Cosmos Drive, but...something's telling me its purpose ain't served quite yet. The etchings on the stone are the names of the Ten Sages from mom's time, including the grandfather I mentioned before...His name's right on top, Borealis Aurora, the font bigger than the rest. Guess he musta had a big ego or something. But mom's never spoken ill of him, so its kinda a shame he was alive waaaaaay before my time.

Anyways, this stone's gotta go somewhere right? This planet's pretty big, but not much bigger than say...the Earth's moon or something like that. If I just concentrate reeeeeaally hard on the stone, then...

"Aha!" The stone lit up and a trail of aura weaved to the right of my body and bolted forward straight in that direction.

"Alright...I'm sooo close I can practically taste it!" ...You know, I wonder if anyone's ever tried to lick an Aurian Drive before? ...Like I said, I'm weird like that. But I gotta keep my mind going somehow! How else is someone supposed to keep themselves company when they're...all...alone...

…

"No! Keep yer heard up Shina...! Y-You're almost there..." I barely felt the trickle of water down the right side of my face as I raised my weary legs and trotted across the planet's surface. There wasn't much to unearth beyond more and more of those holed hills, but I did run into a couple of interesting knick-knacks along the way!

Like there was this crusty bracelet that looked like it'd fit on my ring finger! I guess Aurians back then must've worn Drive bracelets like rings...That or they had really, REALLY tiny wrists.

Then I also picked up this rusty metal bowl that had a lot of ash in it. I'm guessing they set a fire in it, but for what? For warmth? For worship? There's barely record of Aurian history before the first migration of worlds. I'm literally the first Aurian to know about any of this in...golly, I can't even begin to imagine how long!

"...Oh wow I'm an idiot," I crack a cheeky grin and grab the side of my head as I start feeling a little faint, "This is the first Aurian homeworld!"

...Did I mention I can be kinda slow at times? Yeeeeah...

I spent the next minute or so spinning around with sparkles in my eyes as I try and piece together what this place could've been like long ago. I asked myself many questions about what the planet was named, how our people used to live, if there was any plantlife. But then a voice in my head told me to cut it out and stay focused, so I slowly stopped in place and cuddled the completed artifact against my chest.

"Yeah...I know, I know..."

Then I start to wrap my arms under my chest and raise my head, taking on a gruff, masculine voice as I mutter, "Come on Shina, you've got to focus! You don't get a second chance at having a family!"

I ease up on my arms and giggle, "I know Alex...I..."

…

Now I'm just making myself depressed. But for a moment, it did really feel like he was back, y'know? ...Maybe its insane, but a part of me still doesn't want to believe that he's actually dead. It wouldn't be the first time he defied death.

"He deserved to be here..." I whisper as a few tears trickle down the sides of my face. I wipe them off before they roll off the cheeks and shake my head, lifting it up with a smile.

"But...that's why I got finish this for the both of us! So no more lollygagging! Its time to go go GO!" My feet feel as light as a feather as I rush alongside the trail of aura and finally, after wearing my feet down for fifteen minutes, I arrive at the final destination.

...Well, I got my wish. Sort of.

There was a golden citadel that stood on this planet at some point in time. But it collapsed, the pristine gold rotting and dirtied over many millenniums. All that was left standing were the front gates and foyer, including its ceiling. Though everything was in shambles, I stood there in awe of the place for a whole minute. Wouldn't have surprised me if a fly wandered into my mouth during that.

After I got over my initial shock I looked down and noticed there was some sort of...idol or totem on the ground. It was the one thing on this entire planet made of wood, but the face had been rubbed out and all I could see was the person's robe. Was THIS the Grand Cosmic Aurian Sage? Or...the Goddess of Aura? The statue's features were pretty gender neutral honestly.

I put the totem down and glance at the front gates. Yep, as I suspected, there's a notch in the very front that'd be just a perfect fit for the artifact!

But as I head on towards the slot, I start getting goosebumps and my arms shake. I know I went on this journey and all but...I-I don't know what to say! Behind these gates lies a power greater than even the Neo Drive. And with great power, comes great responsibility...

Gosh, I'm honestly a little scared that I'll acquire the Cosmos Drive and go mad with power! Or what if its too great for me to handle and I blow up? Or...or what if...

"Click!"

As if guided by a hand that wasn't my own, my right arm raised the artifact piece and pushed the stone into place. I tightly bit my teeth down and started feeling a little freaked out.

"O-Ok...that's not normal..." But as I tried to tug my hand back, my fingertips remained glued to the rock, even as I grabbed onto it with my other hand.

"Ok! You can let go now!" I yelled to myself as bright, glittery blue light flooded out of the seams of the artifact and washed over my body. The stone was shoved out of the slot and grew slightly so the hole in the center could slip past my hand and onto my wrist. It bit down into place and the gravely surface was shed off to reveal a gemstone bracelet as bright, blue and beautiful as the starry skies around me.

Then, with one loud "Crack!" the door split wide open and the gushing light threw me onto my back. I wound up being knocked out for a few minutes due to my head hitting a rock, but otherwise it could've been a whooole lot worse...

When I came to I groaned and drew my eyes open slowly. The citadel's gates were now wide open to reveal...nothing. There was nothing inside but dusty ruins and a terrible, odorous musk. That smell alone was nasty enough to lift me to my feet and plug my nose, swinging my hand around to dispel the stench.

"That's horrible! Uuugh, get away!" But that's when I noticed it. Latched around my wrist right above my normal bracelet was that bright, blue and beautiful on. It was snug as a rug cuff. My heart skipped a beat and I was frightened but then that fear just...went away? It was like the stone felt just right, like it'd always been a part of me.

A wistful wind blew over me from behind and I had to hold my hair down before it got all up in my face. Then as I raised my head up I was mystified by the presence of someone who wasn't there just a moment ago. They had a ghastly light-blue body, kind of like a Force Ghost, and their limbs and head were obscured in the shadows of their robe. Despite their spiritual form, I could make out that the colors of their robe were dark blue. But there was a moving pattern on their clothes that reminded me of drifting through space and seeing the many stars that littered it.

The robe itself was also very fluffy. Very...very fluffy. Kinda like a moth's wings, if I had to make a comparison? I fought very hard not to leap at the robed figure and hug their rub to see what it felt like...Cause this person obviously wasn't alive, and I'd just like like a complete fool. But wow, this person was pretty short. The top of his head barely reaches the bottom of my chest...Oh right, I'm also just really tall. Oops!

...Still, I'm getting a lot of "That Man" vibes from this person. Enigmatic, yet one look could tell ya that they are full of saintly wisdom...

"Oh!" My eyes lit up and the next thing I knew my cheeks were bright red and I was on the ground both hands planted firmly in the dirt and my forehead nearly half buried, "I-I'm sorry! Y-You're the Grand Cosmic Aurian Sage, aren't you...sir?!"

The spirit drew his right sleeve out and with a clicking, nasally voice responded, "Raise your head o' child of mine."

So I did, and I could feel the spirit grinning from cheek to cheek. Really wish I could get a good look at his face, but that hood of his was getting good mileage out of all the light casting down upon him. But there's no doubt he sounded...well, he sounded wise, but also different than what I was expecting? Its like he's clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth with every syllable.

After sitting up on my knees the spirit lowered his right hand and whispered, "I am he of whom you refer to as the Grand Cosmic Aurian Sage. And you...are Shina Aurora, no?"

Oh my god I must be red as a beet right about now! My smile's about to escape the sides of my face too! Oh goodness I can barely breathe-

"Relax..." He waves his right hand down at me a couple times and I could hear him giggle, "It shouldn't come as any surprise, should it? Did you think I earned my merits over mere hyperbole?"

He raised his sleeves to the stars above and the power of his voice was like an echo of the heavens, "As my children rest amongst the cosmos, so too do I rest amongst their hearts. The very fiber of my being has been woven between the stars, and spread across the boundless eternity you call...reality."

"...Ummm..."A little grandiose of an intro, don'tcha think?

"..." As though he read my mind, the Sage lowered his head and appeared to smile as he giggled out, "Or to put it in simpler terms...I have been watching over you since the day you were born, Shina Aurora."

"Y-You have...?"

"Yes. Though it'd be more accurate to say...I saw the day you were born coming a long, long time ago."

"Oh! So you're clairvoyant like my mom!" I shot up and smiled in intrigue but the Sage started to turn his body and growl a little. Did...did I touch a nerve?

"Ohoho..." His chuckle returned in record time as he waved his right sleeve up and remarked, "Clairvoyance is but one of many feats the Cosmos Drive can perform. To boil down my power to just one simple, effortless task is an insult to the years it took me to create it..."

He shifted his head a bit to the right and remarked, "So...how does it feel on you? Comfortable? Uncomfortable? Please, bear your heart to me, Shina Aurora."

I lifted the bracelet up and raised the right of my lips in a sort of frown-smile combination before shrugging my shoulders and rubbing the back of my head, "I don't really... _feel_ any different."

"Hmm..." The Sage nodded his head and waddled across the dirt, leaving nary a footprint in his wake cause...you know, he's dead.

"That's only natural. The Cosmos Drive has merely bonded to you. To wield its power you have to-"

"Touch down on it like an Aurian Drive?"

"NO!" He screamed with a hiss as I felt his cold eyes glaring at me through the shadows. He huffed a little bit and then brushed his sleeves against the front of his robe, recomposing himself into a more saintly posture as he walked back to where he started and remarked, "No...no, its not that simple. The Cosmos Drive isn't just an extension of your aura...It is an extension of the mind."

"My...mind?"

"Yes, yes! You have to **will** forth the power locked away in the Cosmos Drive. Without a strong will, the Drive's power will consume you!"

"..." I squinted my eyes at the Cosmos Drive and then held it out towards the Sage, "But this IS the strongest Aurian Drive, ya?"

"Absolutely."

"Even stronger than the Neo Drive?"

"...Oh, positively." He pushed his hood aside a bit with how wide his grin got.

"Well then what are you waiting for?! Show me how to use it!" As I energetically leapt in the air the Sage thrust his right sleeve up and declared, "Not so fast there!"

"Huh huh?" I blubbered in confusion.

"Did I not warn you of the consequences my child? Yet you'd so recklessly pursue power...? Perhaps you are not worthy of the Cosmos Drive after all..."

I pucker my lower lip up and bow my head, frantically apologizing to the Sage, "I-I'm sorry Mr. Sage! B-But I don't have much time...! My-"

"I know all about your sister...And of that sorry excuse for a man who calls himself 'Gravitus'."

I blinked a few times as he went on to explain, "My words are no mere boast my child. Before my soul was stripped from my body and sealed away here, I weaved my aura through every nanofiber of the universe, creating a web through which I would be able to see anything that happens in the present or the future."

"So you know what's happening right now?"

"And what WILL happen, yes. But sadly now that you unlocked the Cosmos Drive's power, I'm afraid that power is lost to me and given to you..."

I raise the Cosmos Drive up before my face again and wonder aloud, "So...if I concentrate REAAALLY hard on this, I can see the future like mom?"

"The Cosmos Drive is a path to powers that many would consider to be...unnatural."

Wow, Star Wars reference. I wonder if he did that intentionally? The subtle head nod seemed to suggest he was, but...

"But yes. The future is yours to see as you wish. But the road is long and winding, so do take care not to peer too deep..."

"...Ummm, I have a question." I say, diligently waving my hand in the air, which seemed to humor the Sage.

"Yes yes, I'm sure you do my child."

"You knew I was coming...right? Does that mean I was always destined to wield the Cosmos Drive?"

"...Destiny is a funny word to consider when viewed through the lens of a singular timeline," The Sage waved and twirled his right hand around in the air above his hood while enjoying the sight of the stars, "Did I know you were coming? Yes. But does that mean everything was predetermined? Absolutely not. You never would have made it this far without your own power."

"...That's not true. I was never alone until now." I said with my head hung low.

"Yes..." The Sage clicked his tongue and nodded a bit, "The tragedy of Alex Whiter's demise is one even I could turn away from. But barring his involvement in your journey for a moment..."

"You still traveled thousands of light years away from home, clinging to the slimmest hope that my existence, my legacy, would be real. You raced against many other similar minded folk living different lives across time and space, yet YOU were the one to cross the finish line. Its doubtful that I'd ever accept any other as the successor of my Cosmos Drive."

I clung my hands up against my chest and wiggle my hips around while looking pretty silly and embarrassed, "Awww...t-that's not true."

After my embarrassment washed away I looked down at the Cosmos Drive, and the Sage edged a little closer while remarking, "You're thinking about your sister, aren't you?"

"O-Of course!" I said with my head shooting right back up, "I haven't STOPPED thinking about her this whole trip!"

"...Its been a couple years almost, hasn't it? Why don't you...check up on her?" He wagged his right sleeve at me, giving his full permission to look onward.

I looked at the Cosmos Drive and squinted my eyes shut.

"Focus, focus..." I take deep breaths in as I concentrate on the Cosmos Drive's power. I try to envision the future, and feel my mind drifting through corridors of stars that speed by as streaks of silver. And what I see beyond the reach of the stars is something I'd never wish upon anyone.

I see Gravitus, now donning this terribly awful looking robotic black suit of armor and radiating with a powerful rainbow aura, standing triumphant high over Sancturia as the storm clouds raze the skies above. There's...no signs of my little sister.

"N-No..." I gasp and wheeze, and my mind in a desperate attempt to deny these images, shunts forward even further in time. There I witness a titanic black wyvern with the arms, legs, head and scales of a dragon looming over the collapsed, bleeding bodies of two boys that reminded me a lot of Alex. Standing amidst a glass domed arena behind this monster was a massive black hole that appeared to be swallowing everything in sight. And when I looked upon that monster's eyes, I felt a familiar fear...of helplessness.

"NO NO NO!"

"Snap out of IT!" The Sage's bellowing scream ended the nightmares and snapped my eyes wide open, where I proceeded to collapse upon my knees and pant in a cold sweat, my arms drooped limp by my hips.

"...I warned you not to peer too deep." The Sage chided me without mercy...I deserved it too.

"...But what DID you see, my child?" He asked, knowing full well ahead of time what my answer would be.

I gripped the Cosmos Drive tightly in one hand and thrust my body upright, shaking my head as the horrifying imagery continued to infect my mind, "Gravitus...victorious...A dark dragon...and the end of everything..."

"...So that is what you saw. Your most despised enemy, reigning triumphant with the power of the Neo Drive. And the judicious betrayer, Justek Arcavira, swallowing everything into darkness..."

"J-Justek...D-Did you say...Justek?" I gasped as my body tried to reel itself back into reality.

"Why yes. You DID have a harrowing encounter with that terrible man, did you not? He, so malignant a spectre, drove YOUR sword through the heart of the one you love...And ultimately proved to be the one responsible for his death."

The Sage shook his head and looked down on me with pity as I hung my head in shame. He then edged closer and used the top of one sleeve to raise my head and remark, "Now that you've seen these futures...Whatever shall you do, my child?"

"I-I..." The wretched pain in my heart forced me to my feet and got me to scream, "I need to get back! Now! T-There's still time to-"

"..." The sorrowful vibes the spirit of the Sage projected tugged at my heartstrings as he muttered, "I'm afraid that what you're asking for is...impossible."

"...W-What?"

"There are many powers I grafted onto the Cosmos Drive before I was sealed away...Instantaneous transmission was sadly not one of them. Even with the Cosmos Drive's top speed, you would not make it back to your home in time to stop Gravitus from killing your sister."

"I-I don't believe you!" I scream out as my head's rushing, "I've experienced split timelines! Where there's a will there's a way!"

"...Time isn't linear, to a degree. If factors are unchangeable, and something has a 100% possibility of occurring, then there's nothing anyone can do. Not even the Cosmos Drive wields the power to change this..."

I bitterly bite my lower lip and squeeze my hand around the Cosmos Drive and start pulling at it to the point where I feel my skin ripping off, "T-Then what good is this?!"

I yell and scream and lose completely control over myself as despair takes over, "I came all this way for this...this stupid rock and I can't even save my sister?! THEN WHAT WAS THE POINT?!"

He laid his sleeve atop my hand as it desperately tried to tear the Cosmos Drive off. His piercing gaze killed any trace of anger and frustration I had and I was left crying with a motionless expression. He then remarked in an understanding voice, "If you choose to go to your sister, then the future is truly impossible to change...But if you were to bring her _here_ , then that would be a different story."

"Bring her...here?"

"The Cosmos Drive's power is incredible. If you listen to my voice, my teachings, then you'll accomplish many great things...We could even stop the likes of Justek Arcavira with ease."

"Stop...Justek?"

I look back down at the Cosmos Drive, and slowly raise my hand off of it. My body felt light, and the sparkle in the stone alluring. I was thinking about...avenging Alex. But more importantly...

"How does this work? How...do I save Kairi?"

"That is within your power at the moment. All you have to do is concentrate really hard on the one you cherish. My aura is weaved throughout the universe. If your love is as strong as you say, then it shall bring her to you."

...Of course my love is strong. Its stronger than even a great Sage like you could believe! I'll show you, just ya watch!

I turn around and raise the Cosmos Drive to my chest. I squeeze my eyes shut and pour my very heart and soul into the Drive's power. My concentration levels are at their maximum. I've shut out all other sights and sounds and start thinking about my memories.

I remember every waking moment I've spent with Kairi. Teaching her to play video games, helping her with homework, training with her, eating with her, sleeping with her when she's scared...Hugging her when she's sad or hurt...I don't leave any stone unturned. To hell with your ambitions Gravitus! To hell with your tyranny! I'm getting my family back...And you'll never, EVER lay a finger on my little sister!

I feel something happening. A shift in mass directly in front of me. I don't let up my concentration, and could tell that my efforts were being rewarded. A bright shiny light shone through my creased eyelids and then suddenly, something popped into place and landed on the ground with a soft, cutesy "Ooof!"

I widened my eyes and my heart melted to goo. Green shirt, blue jeans, long brown hair, cute, dimpled face...It was my little sister Kairi, just as I last remembered seeing her. She landed on her butt and rubbed it, sounding sore as could be. But when she looked up at me, her confusion was palpable.

But I was too busy trying to hold back the tears. As Kairi whispered at me "S-Shina...is that...you?" I bent down and cupped my hands around her cheeks. Her skin was lukewarm, but I could feel the blood rushing to her face as she forced a smile and giggled.

"S-Sis stop it...! Hahaha!" She's just as ticklish as I remember it...I-I...

I force my arms around under hers and embrace her in the tightest hug I've ever given out. The tears gush out of my face and trickle down onto her shirt, my attempts to say hello foiled by some hiccups.

"I...I never thought I'd see you again...! Its ok now...Its ok...Y-Your big sis' here. Everything will be alright..."

The Grand Cosmic Aurian Sage put his sleeve on my shoulder and I looked back at him with tearful eyes.

"I-I can't thank you enough...!" Was the simplest way I could express my unending appreciation.

"...Think nothing of it. You are all my children," He raised his sleeves up a bit and remarked, "So why stop at your sister? You have a grasp over how that power works now...Why not bring ALL of Sancturia here?"

"...Really?" I said, glaring at the desolate landscape.

"This world may be ruined...But you can bring it back to life, greater than ever before. You have the power my child. Just let me teach you... _everything_ I know."

"I will. I want to learn Mr. Sage! Then I can pay Justek AND Yukari back for hurting Alex!"

"Excellent. But for now...why don't you catch up with your little sister?"

With a firm nod I turn back to Kairi and continue to hug her gently. Her warm embrace, her tender smile...I'll never let her go again. I lost so much along the way...But now that I gained my most important something back it almost felt...Worth it, y'know?

Yes...This is my happy ending. And I'll keep making happy memories going forward. Hey God? If you're listening still...Thank you for your help.

My name is Shina Aurora. And everything will be juuuust fine.

 **THE END**

….

….

….

"Crrrck...The girl is content with herself. Excellent..."

The Grand Cosmic Aurian Sage placed his sleeves upon the girl's shoulders, and she seemed unaware of his presence. The sleeves of his robe slid down, revealing a pair of four-fingered hands. The fingers were not stubby like a human's...They were claw-like, similar to a praying mantis'. The tip of his clawed fingers opened up and caressed Shina's shoulders with their sticky, prickly membranes. The back of his hands were covered in wrinkled, hardened green skin, with the pink, fleshy muscle of the sides of his hands plain as day.

"Yes...I will train you. You shall be filled with both knowledge and power...My Vestige of the Cosmos." The jaw of the Sage slipped free of the shadows that bound it in mystery. The bottom of his jaw was curved and rugged, with a pair of tiny pincers beside his drool covered mouth. He had no teeth, for the space within his mouth was instead filled with ten tiny, prehensile tongues.

"Two-thousand one hundred and FIFTY years...Two-thousand one hundred and fifty years it has been since you wrenched my soul from my body, and shackled it to the ruins of my birthplace, you accursed Ten Sages...But it seems that fate...was always on **my** side, Camillia Aurora."

The Sage clicked his tongues against the roof of his mouth with delight and pressed his slimy lips together into a smile, "Yukari Yakumo, Justek Arcavira, Auris Aurora, Gravitus, Alex Whiter...I must thank you all for delivering to me this girl. She shall be the _perfect_ vessel through which I will realize my dream at long, long last."

"...The Lost Age of Aurians shall be reborn! And all who stood in the way of my dream shall wallow in the pain of loss through all eternity!"

" **I**... _win_."

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

Well, it has been a long, long road. Starting from February of 2016 and ending off at the start of September 2018. Two and a half years for this Part of the story...

Geez, talk about long eh? Even longer than Part 4 itself ended up being. Now really, this could have ended a lot sooner. If you cut out every break I took, this would've been done in February no doubt...Which WAS my original plan, I assure you.

But things got complicated, I had to take a lot of looks at myself and how I wanted to proceed with writing this story since, if I must be honest with you all, there's still a LOT of material to go.

But Part 4 EX, or as it was SUPPOSED to be called if not for 's funky allergies to periods, 4.5, is the culmination of all stories that take place before and after it chronologically. The journey of Alex Whiter, and really the other Elemental Overlords, comes to a head here, with many revelations coming to light regarding the nature of their existence and the universe they live in.

What are Alex Whiter, Mew and Riku? Self-inserts.

Who is the Chronicler? The "Author", AKA, me.

Why is Alex called the Phoenix of Destruction? Because it was his power that wiped out the Marvel Universe.

Why was the Marvel Universe destroyed? Because Yukari Yakumo wanted to ensure that Alex would be imprisoned forever.

What happened to Kairi's sister Shina? This whole part was practically dedicated to answering THAT question. And yet really, the story's not fully told on that one...But that's for another day.

What was Justek's involvement in the "betrayal"? Simple, he was working with Yukari to undermine Shina and Alex's bond by any means necessary. But...perhaps there's more to his involvement that hasn't quite been detailed.

All these questions and more were answered throughout this Part, while simultaneously asking more questions now that the universe has opened up more and more. Now its not just as simple as this being a story about OCs going to video game worlds. Now the worlds of anime, manga and comics are fully intertwined in the lore. Anything has a chance of happening. AnyONE has a chance of appearing.

But on the subject of that. I again apologize for throwing in spoilers for Undertale, Madoka and Xenoblade Chronicles into a story that's otherwise been Touhou-centric. I do plan to explain more about Homura, Alvis and Sans at some point, but for now, well...

I'd like to talk a bit more about how Part 4 EX developed over time. While a lot of the story was planned even as far back as Part 3, there were some details that were changing even as the story went on...So lets start from the beginning!

 **Spyro the Dragon World:**

-Not too much changed here. Year of the Dragon I felt was the best story to tackle...But I do admit it could've been paced a lot better, and I copied dialogue from the game a little TOO much. But the purpose of using Spyro and later on Crash as the first two worlds was to sort of easy into the story, give Alex and Shina room to breathe and get to know each other before the later half of the tale truly tested their mettle. Oh yeah, I did at one point plan to have a Chapter or two dedicated to the Super Bonus Round, but then I felt that was wholly unnecessary and trimmed it out.

 **Crash Bandicoot World:**

-Again, Twinsanity felt like the most fitting game to tackle as a story. Crash of the Titans I don't dislike, but I feel it would've been a little TOO goofy for this story. Plus as far as conflicts go, the Evil Twins presented Alex with his first moral dilemma in the story. Sure, the Gaia Temporis made him immune to the two's reality bending tricks, but Shina on the other hand? Not so much. It was a test of Alex's patience, a test he ultimately failed when he handed Cortex over to the Evil Twins.

-One thing Twinsanity allowed me to do was work with some of the abandoned concepts that didn't make the final cut. I didn't want to go TOO overboard with them but I liked the idea of the Pirate Dimension and worked that one in. N. Arwhal was fun to write and if I ever do another Crash story who knows? Maybe he'll show up again.

 **Guilty Gear World:**

-Originally the story was going to be a more original one taking place after Accent Core's plot. But I never could really figure out how to make it work in a way I was satisfied with, and with the Guilty Gear plot being re-ignited with Sign I said "Fuck it" and decided to work with that. The one thing that stuck around from the original idea though was fighting a mind-controlled Dizzy.

-The trials Alex and Shina went through were raised a bit more this time around. Now Alex had to deal with people that were just as hard-headed as he was, leading to the first instance of Alex fighting a hero in the story...And this would obviously not be the last time. But more importantly...

-This was the start of a turning point in Shina's character, where she begins to feel a little more brave and activates the Valkyrie Drive for the first time. That scene still remains one of the my favorites to have written.

-Oh also, all the Chapter titles in that story are named after Guilty Gear songs!

 **BlazBlue World:**

-Hooooo boy did this story go through some changes. The first part of this story was always meant to cover Calamity Trigger, but after that? Well, we'll get to that in a bit.

-The idea behind splitting Alex and Shina up was to see how they'd handle their predicaments without relying on each other. Alex wound up running into the stubborn folk while Shina more-or-less ran into the kinder folk. One could say Shina lost some of her development in this story but the way I see it she had to lose before she could gain. In other words, once she gained the strength to regain that bravery on her own, THAT'S when she truly deserved to keep it. And you'll notice she never has a moment of faltering again after this point until the Touhou arc...

-This is also the point where we see Alex's urges to see justice be done and get revenge start to tear him apart. He completely and utterly is put at Terumi and Nu's mercy the whole story, only managing something of a victory against the latter because of Hakumen...On that note, yes, I MAY have given Hakumen a bit too much attention when it came to fights. I suppose that level of favoritism should've been expected considering he's my main, but I'll try to dial it back a bit next time. I promise.

-Now, the second story. BlazBlue was an ongoing story while I was writing Part 4 EX. The console version of Central Fiction was about to come out around the time the first BlazBlue story was to begin. So I'll try and make the list short about what changed:

1\. Terumi went from being the final boss to his Susano'o form being the final boss. Honestly, a change for the better, cause even with the Corrupted Paradox form I can't see Terumi putting up even a bit of a fight. And though Susano'o fared poorly himself, he at least got to fight back. Oh yeah, when a villain was possessed by an artifact piece, the form is called "Corrupted Paradox".

2\. Azrael was originally going to be fought in an actual, full-on battle, but when Central Fiction reminded me that he's as vulnerable to elements as the rest of us I figured there was no point drawing out a fight and had Alex handle him the way he did. I do admit now that it could've been handled better, but who knows, maybe Azrael will get the battle he truly wants someday...

3\. Why couldn't Mori have gotten Jubei out sooner so his moveset would've been available for his fight? Truth be told, I don't think my prediction of how Jubei fights was TOO far off from the final product.

4\. Es was not involved in the finale originally. The original plan was for Alex to actually break through Tsukuyomi with pure rage and nearly kill Amaterasu, only for Amane to still seal him up. Honestly, glad I went with this, cause Alex still needed to be weakened a bit for Amane to feasibly be able to restrain him.

5\. And the biggest of all...The second story was once non-canon, instead just a What-If (Yeah, remember those? Don't worry, the old ones are still canon, though...) where Alex and Shina decided to stick around after their business was done and deal with Terumi anyways. I changed it up so Terumi grabbed the artifact piece, thus justifying why they'd stick around.

 **Mega Man X World:**

-This was originally going to be a 1 for 1 retelling of Mega Man X5. X6 was actually originally going to be uninvolved until I started getting ideas regarding the artifact piece possessing Alex and integrating the Nightmare Virus into his experience. Of course, deciding to do the Maverick Hunter Xs beforehand helped a lot in making these changes.

-This was probably the one story where the OCs took a backseat to the video game characters. I obviously wasn't going to taint X vs. Zero after I had spent time building it up. Speaking of...THAT is probably in my Top 5 favorite fights to have written for Clash of the Elements. Utilizing a lot of X AND Classic Mega Man's arsenal, making call backs to both series and throwing in a nod to Omega in Mega Man Zero for good measure. Fun fact, the title of the second phase of that battle is a reference to a vocal remix of Dr. Wily's Castle 1 from Mega Man 2 made by the famous doujin group SOUND HOLIC...I do like to toss in nods to songs and remixes in my chapter titles quite often.

-Finally, all the development Alex and Shina have gotten culminate in this story, with the two confessing their love for one another as Shina takes a stand against Alex's split personality that threatens to drag him to destruction. This is also one of my top 5 favorite fights.

 **Touhou World:**

-But this is the big one. At the time of starting to write Part 4 EX, Legacy in Lunatic Kingdom had released, as did Urban Legend in Limbo. Now, I never got a chance to put Sumireko into the story, but Hecatia and Junko were MAJOR game changers in how the plot went down. Getting a little ahead of myself, but in the Fall of Fantasy story I had originally planned to have Alex solo the Lunarians. But I thought that was a bad idea...UNTIL Hecatia and Junko came about and introduced the idea that the Lunarians hate Fairies, at which point I proceeded with things but with those two being involved.

-Like how ZUN handles his series, I've always tried to keep my Touhou works lined up with whatever's going in the series' timeline. But that ran into some slight complications when the story took so long to write that Touhou 16 and 15.5 came out, introducing a grand total of NINE characters...Yet none of them appeared in this story. There IS an in-story reason for that that I uhhh...Well, I'll get to that in a moment. But outside, I had already had to rewrite the plot twice to accommodate the characters from Double Dealing Character and Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, so I wasn't in the mood to add Okina Matara despite the fact that she would've been a good fit for some of the stuff going down, being a Youkai Sage like Yukari and Kasen.

-Yes, Alex and Shina had sex. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. But what I WASN'T going to do was be explicit about it. I don't know the first thing having sex the right way and frankly the romantic undertones of that scene would've been ruined if I tried. If there's a high enough demand for it though, I can give it a shot, I guess? I do sort of know a guy who writes erotica who'd be able to help me out.

-Yukari Yakumo was always planned to be the final adversary of this storyline. There were a few hints sprinkled throughout about her identity, but those were more for the character of Alex's sake than the reader's. If you pieced together Yukari beforehand then congrats! But I did intend for her reveal to be a massive surprise to the audience.

-...So uhh, when I mentioned an in-story reason for no 15.5 or 16 characters showing up...It kind of extends to a MAJOR hiccup I made regarding unresolved foreshadowing. Yeah, remember how Alex was having some spottiness when it came to remembering events in certain video game worlds? I fully intended to reveal that his flow of information was cut off the moment Yukari disconnected from the "Author". Basically, all that Alex knew up until the start of Part 4 EX is stuff **I** knew at the time. So because Yukari cut him off like that, Alex didn't know anything about Guilty Gear Revelator, BlazBlue Central Fiction, or everything related to Touhou past 15. So I would've made a justification for the latter's lack of acknowledgment by saying that Okina had used her powers as a Hidden God to conceal their appearance and not throw Alex off. My sincerest apologies for forgetting to put this in. I even had it on the Outlines for crying out loud!

-There's one major thing I want to get out of the way now...I HATE how I had to end up handling the "betrayal" part of the story. The idea of using Justek's hypnotism to have Shina stab Alex while Yukari blinded him with a deception was NOT one I made lightly. I'm not trying to brag, but I wrote the growing relationship between Alex and Shina TOO well...That it wound up forcing me to go down this path if I wanted the "betrayal" to happen. That's a major problem, I suppose, with this being written as a prequel of established events. I wrote myself into a corner and by the time I got to the point I had been building up since back in Part 6 I wound up taking the cheapest route possible to get what I wanted out of this, even IF Justek's powers had been established beforehand. I suppose in some manner of speaking, the tragedy of how this HAD to happen fits in well with the character of Alex Whiter by that point...

-This leaves us with the final story...The Touhou Genocide...Or not! I want to make it clear. I did not backpedal on this plotline out of fear of backlash while I was writing. I had already wiped out Kingdom Hearts and Marvel, killed Link in the Ocarina of Time storyline, and nearly had Mario die. If I want to pull the trigger on something, I will not hesitate...But you see, I had decided against going full Genocide BEFORE Part 4 EX was starting to be written. And there was enough per-established in the story regarding the wish of the "higher-ups" and Yukari's trickery in the MAsquerade Trilogy that I could easily write an out to the Genocide and still go through with it in a sense. Ultimately, as Yukari pointed out, even if Alex attacked a fake Gensokyo, he still chose revenge over love, and death over peace. Had Alex simply went to find Shina, Yukari would have left him well enough alone. Yukari's not blameless in any of this, but neither is Alex. They both made the worst decisions possible in their attempts to protect what they cared for, and the end result is that a completely unrelated world had to pay dearly for it.

-In the end, there were no real winners in this story. Alex surrendered his faith in the world and caved in to his split-personality to wipe the universe clean. Yukari Yakumo may have saved Gensokyo, but the measures she took along the way has only painted a massive target on her back not just from the higher powers, but the people of her world. And while Shina Aurora has reached the Cosmos Drive, it appears that its creator is not what he appears to be...Anyone who has read Part 6 knows what Alex's decisions lead to, but what about Yukari and Shina? What shall happen to them? Well...Before I talk about that, there's one more thing I wish to discuss.

 **Other Worlds:**

-Originally there were two other worlds planned for Part 4 EX. Ratchet and Clank would've been slotted between Crash Bandicoot and Guilty Gear, and would've taken place during A Crack in Time. Buuut while there were some thematic elements that could've worked for the overall story, I couldn't really find a way to make it work that well.

-The other world would've been Metal Gear Solid, taking place during the events of Peace Walker, but Mega Man X ended up taking its place for one...pretty obvious reason I'd say. The discrepancies of power for Alex alone would've been too much. At least with Spyro and Crash they tend to deal with foes that have some degree of elemental power or otherwise high-tier magic/technology. I suspect the reason I chose Metal Gear Solid at the time was because I was in the middle of enjoying the series.

 **Final Thoughts:**

Part 4 EX is, I feel, my best work so far. Still heavily flawed, and you can tell I was working through those flaws throughout not just in writing and describing things but also with pacing in general.

...And that's actually pretty important to me right now.

See, a lot of my breaks were because of doubt that I should keep pressing onward with this story. It originally started out as some teenage fantasy. I'd never thought I'd make it this far, let alone think as far in to the future about what I want to do with the plot.

But by making it this far, it makes going back and looking at the old stuff...really hard to digest. Yet...I don't want to go back and rewrite EVERYTHING. I don't want to spend two years redoing Part 4 especially, even if I could make it better or trim it down. But Parts 5 and 6 are a different story. Those two Parts are very important for events going forward, and so I really, REALLY don't like how they were written.

Parts 1 through 4? Sure, they could use the rewriting, but a lot of the major events a rewrite would benefit from having either been brought up in Part 4 EX or can/will be brought up in the rewrites of Part 5 and 6.

...Right now though I'm tired. I've spent a lot of the Summer getting through the remainder of Part 4 EX and that's had a somewhat negative impact on my personal life. So for the next few months besides working on the redone profiles and outlines I won't be doing any major writing. No "Maverick Hunter X7", no "Something Masquerades", nothing.

When I come back, the rewritten Part 5 shall be placed under the Mario section, cause ultimately the story DID start with Mario so I consider my OCs to be Mario characters in some sense of the word. The title will be pretty much the same, so be on the look out for "RE:Lover from the Lost Aura" coming...whenever I'm ready!

As for what lies beyond the rewrites? Well, obviously Shina still needs to be saved yeah? That and much, MUCH more will be covered in "Clash of the Elements Chronicles".

And beyond BEYOND that? Well...Lets not get too ahead of ourselves? There's a lot to look forward to in the **past** and **future**.

Until next time though, thanks to whoever has stuck through this long, and take care of yourselves for me, alright?


End file.
